To Live
by MelancholySkies
Summary: Enjolras just happens to be at the wrong place at the right time, but it rips the world she thought she knew so well to pieces. The Amis save not just her life but her heart. E/É, 19th century. T for swearing and violence.
1. Introduction

**INTRODUCTION**

Dear readers, let me warn you ahead of time: This an authors note (and here you will see almost all of said readers immediately click on "Next Chapter", because everybody hates authors notes, and if you don't you are weird). I've labeled it Introduction in the hopes that some people will actually take the time to at least scan this AN, because this is sort of my way of letting you know what to expect from the following Eponine/Enjolras fanfiction.

To make it easier on the eyes, I made a list.

1. Parts derived from the novel by Victor Hugo (a phenomenal writer and a philosophical genius. What a brilliant bastard).

2. Parts derived from the musical, which has music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, with an English libretto by Herbert Kretzmer.

3. Parts derived from the 2012 movie musical, directed by Tom Hooper.

4. Parts derived from my own imagination, for the sake of the story. This includes time augmentations (and general changes to the timeline), added scenes, (most likely) incorrect information on life in Paris 1832. But folks, this is why we call it _Fanfiction_.

5. It's not beta'd. However, if you'd like to beta it and send me a copy of the version, PM me. I'd be flattered and grateful.

6. Minimal AN's (besides this semi-mandatory one). I am a reader of Fanfiction before I am a writer and trust me, I know. I don't want to hear about _you_, author. I want to read the goddamned story.

7. Slight changes in writing style and tone. This I GREATLY apologise for. It's a habit I'm trying to cure.

8. Replies to questions in the reviews. If you ask (unless it's rhetorical), I'll answer. Or I'll do my best to.

9. References to various works of literature, song, and theatre I enjoy. Point them out and I'll award you a smile and a virtual package of homemade baked goods, your choice, my treat.

10. Swearing and some inappropriate scenes for people that don't like that stuff. It's T for a reason. If you do, then really, it's very, very tame. For me, anyway. I don't know about you.

11. This is the last one, I promise. Bits of background info inserted into the storytelling that will either interest you or bore you to death. In which case you can skip it completely. You're the reader, after all.

And lastly, please review! I enjoy (constructive) criticism as much as I enjoy praise. I hate meaningless flames that don't tell me _why_ my story sucks (which if it does, please give suggestions as to how to fix such a horrendous problem) as much as I despise endless pages of "THIS IS SO GOOD" without information on which parts are good, so that I know how to keep being good.

Thanks for withstanding a long author's note. I'll let you get on with the story.

Happy reading,

Stormy


	2. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

A cockroach scuttled across her wrist, on its way along the stone wall her back was rested on. Éponine barely even blinked. She was, after all, a gamine and her lifestyle entailed events of much more horror than an insect. Such an event was happening now.

Her chest heaved with the effort of both fleeing and staying as still as she could, and she winced with every unintentional twitch of a finger or foot as she bit her lip to keep herself from making a sound. She could still hear the pounding of his footsteps and see the dangerous glint in his green eyes, but Éponine steeled herself from the fear threatening to seize her heart. She also steeled herself from the pain of her dislocated shoulder and the other various cuts and bruises scattered across her grimy skin.

She couldn't be found. _She couldn't be found_. If she was, there was no telling what Montparnasse would do this time. Flog her? Cut off a finger? Kill her? Éponine almost smiled bitterly. Death was always the easy, painless solution, and so he never gave it to her.

Seconds and then minutes ticked by. Even as she strained her ears there was no sound to be heard. Éponine silently counted to twenty as steadily as possible before relaxing in relief. Perhaps she'd had a stroke of luck and outran him. She slumped against the wall before pushing herself off and took a couple of steps back up the alley.

A hand grabbed her wrist.

Éponine screamed as the vice-like grip pulled her around the corner and up against the wall, a dirty hand closing around her mouth before she could make any more noise. "Shut up! Do you want to get me caught, little whore?" Montparnasse whispered furiously into her ear. She squirmed and hissed like a cat before biting down hard on one of his fingers. He roared in pain before wrenching his hand away from her mouth. "Son of a bitch!" he swore, and Éponine allowed herself a moment of satisfaction before she felt the cold knife on her throat.

"You move and I'll kill you, _pute_!" he growled, greasy dark hair flying around the face that could have been attractive, had it not been twisted into hatred.

"No, you won't," Éponine countered, feeling exceptionally brave. "That would only end my suffering."

"I'll make you beg me to kill you then," Montparnasse said, voice cruel, teeth gnashing.

Éponine raised her chin but instantly regretted it because the knife cut deeper into her flesh. "I'd do it myself, and you will be caught and punished for murder." Hazel-brown stared into dark green because they both knew what this meant. Capital punishment.

"Then I won't get caught, will I?" he ground out, eyes growing even darker and Éponine absentmindedly wondered why he was still talking when he could kill her already. The blood from her neck wound was gushing into the brown of her tattered dress, turning it black.

"I wouldn't get my hopes up," said a new voice from behind Montparnasse. The newcomer's face was blocked from view but the voice struck a memory in her brain. Where had she heard it before?

Montparnasse turned and the other man - she could see his outline now - landed a hefty right hook to his jaw. The force of the impact knocked him to the ground. There was a quick blur of movement, and suddenly Montparnasse was staring into the pistol of Éponine's rescuer.

She knew his voice now. She'd heard it many times before, speaking only of revolution, freedom, and a dawning new world. She even knew his face. Sculpted like a Roman statue, pale, with impassioned blue eyes and tumbling blonde curls.

Enjolras.

"Are you going to call the police on me, bourgeois boy?" Montparnasse smirked, raising his eyebrows tauntingly, though Éponine could see the flicker of fear in his eyes.

"I might," Enjolras replied tightly. The pistol didn't waver from between his opponent's eyes. "If you make one bad move."

"I don't think you understand, _révolutionnaire_," Montparnasse said, though his smirk dropped ever so slightly. "I have evaded them for my entire life, because I am a professional at my trade."

"Trade? I'll stick to calling it thievery," Enjolras bit out.

"The _garce_ you're trying to defend is as much of a thief as I am," Montparnasse spat. "As well as a paid-"

There was a loud _bang_ as the pistol went off and Montparnasse staggered back, howling with pain at the bullet in his arm. "Just get the hell out of here," Enjolras said, and the other gave them an enraged glare.

"You can be sure your father will know about this," Montparnasse snarled, stumbling towards the daughter of said father. Éponine felt the blood in her veins run cold. "And you can be sure we'll both make you _scream_."

"Leave," Enjolras hissed, shoving the man away, and he fled the scene, cursing under his breath as he did so.

Éponine was left staring at Enjolras' profile, the moonlight cutting shadows across the planes of his face. His jaw was still tense and his blue eyes were still hard as flint. The sheen of sweat on his skin made him glow in the moonlight. He was beautiful.

"How did you know?" Êponine rasped, once she found her voice.

He gave her a quick glance, so fast she would have missed it if she'd blinked. "I heard the scream," he said curtly.

"I guess I did get him caught then," she said, suddenly very aware of her appearance. The blush on her face was hidden by the layer of grime on her skin.

Enjolras gave her another unreadable look before nodding once and turned away. She was confused until he took a step away from her. "You're leaving?" she couldn't help herself from blurting out. This time she was sure even the soil on her cheeks couldn't keep the scarlet from showing.

He stopped and swiveled to face her, the blue eyes boring into her brown ones. He didn't say a word.

"I mean- Well, you just saved my life and shot a man in the arm, and you're just going to leave without a word?" Éponine cried, before she could be embarrassed at her outburst.

Enjolras shrugged.

"Don't you speak? You talk an awful lot in your speeches," Éponine snapped, getting annoyed.

A hint of a smile quirked his lips upwards. "I don't talk when I don't need to," he said, and Éponine liked the sound of his voice a little too much.

"Well, I'm _asking_ you to talk." She jutted out a hip and placed a hand on it.

"Who was he?" Enjolras said, and the change of topic (and the topic itself) was so sudden Éponine took a step back.

"What?" she gaped, even though she'd heard him perfectly well.

"You heard me perfectly well. Didn't you say you wanted me to talk?"

A bit unnerved at his quotation of her thoughts, Êponine took ahold of her bearings once more. "You don't need to know who he is," she said firmly, a little coldly.

"I just saved your life, I have a right to know," Enjolras countered, his eye twitching in irritation.

Éponine glowered. "You are not privy to my secrets, as I am not privy to yours," she told him, and her lips pressed tightly together.

He looked like he wanted to argue more, but backed off, his face once again a mask of marble. "Very well." He gave her a small two-fingered salute. "I'll see you around, Mademoiselle." With that he turned and swiftly walked into the darkness of the night.

_Mademoiselle_. Nobody had ever called her that, not even Marius. Éponine stared after his retreating figure, wishing she had let him stay a little longer.

* * *

They barely saw each other for more than a month after that. When they did they pretended not to.


	3. The Rue Plumet

**PART I: ENJOLRAS**

**Chapter One - The Rue Plumet**

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

Enjolras waited for Grantaire to finish telling his story about the time he got so drunk he went into the wrong flat and slept in someone else's bed entirely. The blonde leader of the Amis did this with a deadpan expression on his face, unamusedly watching his fellow revolutionaries laugh their asses off at Grantaire's antics.

The second they finished howling with hilarity he got down to business. "The time is near," he began, loudly. "So near, it's stirring the blood in our veins. But yet beware, don't let the wine get to your brains." This he said very severely, with a particularly venomous look at Grantaire, who gave him an all-too-innocent look. "We need a sign to rally the people." Enjolras looked around for suggestions and possible ideas.

"Well, I heard that-" Combeferre was cut off as Joly suddenly began talking.

"Marius, what's wrong with you today? You look as though you've seen a ghost." Joly, ever the hypochondriac, was getting up and moving to the other side the room, in case Marius was coming down with something.

"Some wine and say what's going on," Grantaire offered, handing him a cup of wine and smirking at Enjolras. In return he was sent a furious glower, sending the already-drunk man off in a fit of giggles.

Marius hardly reacted and simply sighed again. Enjolras stared at him with a curious expression - was he drunk, or something?

"A ghost you say? Maybe; she was just like a ghost to me. One minute there, then she was gone!" The man sighed again as he sat down with the other Amis.

This was far worse. Enjolras could not have him falling in love. It would distract him from the revolution! (In the corner of his mind, he wondered if it was with the girl that he had saved a month ago. And even farther back in the recesses of his mind he desperately wished it wasn't)

Grantaire, meanwhile, was taking advantage of the lovesick Marius and mocking him, dancing around like a moron. "I am agog! I am aghast! Is Marius in love at last? I've never seen him 'ooh' and 'aah'!" The other men laughed with him. Feeling confident, the drunk nudged Enjolras in the shoulder playfully, and was shoved roughly away (which he promptly ignored). "You talk of battles to be won, and here he comes like Don Juan. It is better than an opera!"

Enjolras silenced him with another deadly glare and locked eyes with Marius before addressing everyone as a whole, his voice taking on a commanding tone. "It is time for us all to decide who we are. Do we fight for the right to a night at the opera now? Have you asked yourselves what's the price you might pay?" Here he turned to Marius, who, to his credit, was looking a little ashamed. "Or is this simply a game for a rich young boy to play?"

He seemed to have sparked something in Marius because his head jolted up and he looked beseechingly at Enjolras. "Had you been there tonight, you might know how it feels to be struck to the bone in a moment of breathless delight."

Enjolras rolled his eyes. "Don't be dramatic, Marius."

Marius grasped his shoulder and forced him to look at him. "Had you been there tonight, you might also have known how the world may be changed in just one burst of light!"

Bahorel was practically rolling around with laughter. "I never pinned you as the poetic type, Marius!"

"That's Jehan's job," Grantaire smirked, and Jehan laughed good-naturedly.

Enjolras was beginning to get seriously frustrated. He shook Marius' hand off his arm. "Marius, you're no longer a child! I do not doubt you mean it well, but now there is a higher call!"

Looking half-guilty, half-exasperated, Marius sighed. "I _know_, but-"

"Who cares about your lonely soul? We strive towards a larger goal; our little lives don't count _at all_."

Marius deflated as he saw the others nodding at Enjolras' words (with the exception of Grantaire, who took care not to believe in anything). "Alright, alright, I get it," he said, after a long pause, and Enjolras gave him another stern look before settling back down.

"Listen everybody!" Gavroche called, and, and the entire room turned their heads as one to the 12-year-old. "General Lamarque is dead!"

The chatter turned into a stunned quiet. Even Enjolras, the one they called the "marble man", had to swallow a few times to hide his unhappiness. They all knew he would die sometime soon, but they'd also hoped their favourite general would hold on for a bit longer. Pushing his feelings away, Enjolras forced himself to speak with his brain, like he always did.

"Lamarque... his death is the hour of fate. His death is the sign we await!" Enjolras, feeling empowered by this realisation, stood up and began pacing. "On his funeral day they will honor his name. It'll be a rallying cry that will reach every ear. In the death of Lamarque we will kindle the flame. They will see that the day of salvation is near! Let us welcome it gladly with courage and cheer!"

Bossuet grinned, swept up in the fact that the rebellion was finally starting. "Let us take to the streets with no doubt in our hearts!"

"Give a jubilant shout!" Courfeyrac hollered, raising his cup and clanking it violently with Grantaire's, wine spilling about.

"They will come one and all!" Joly proclaimed, beaming like he always did.

"They will come when we call!" Enjolras shouted, laughing.

* * *

When Éponine came up the stairs into the part of the Café Musain reserved for _Les Amis de Café l'ABC_, the boys were celebrating loudly over something. _Their revolution_, she thought bitterly. _Do they fight for the suffering people? Or the idea of them?_ She watched them drink and shout and heard a sound hardly heard by the general public: laughter, coming from the lips of a particular leader of the revolution. His head was thrown back, blue eyes alight with the flame of passion and excitement- for the battles to come, undoubtedly. Did he really know what he was getting himself into? Did he know that it was a hopeless cause? Did he, Enjolras, a well-off bourgeois boy, know that if he went to fight, he and his friends would not stand a chance?

These contemplations were lost when the gamine saw Marius accept a drink from Jehan, and Éponine was suddenly all too aware of the scrap of paper she held in her hand. A familiar pain shot through her chest. If she gave this to him, any chance for them would be ruined. He would officially meet Cosette and they would fall in love at once. This she was certain of, because even she had to admit they were perfect for each other: the beautiful, kind, selfless, rich young lady was an incomparable match for the romantic, eager, good-hearted young man of the revolution.

Perhaps she could back out of it. It would be all too easy for Éponine to simply toss the address into a nearby gutter and let it rot. It would take a quick, well-delivered lie for Marius to believe she'd tried, but had not been able to get hold of Cosette's address. It would- he was heading her way. There was no way to escape it now.

"'Ponine! Do you have it?" he rushed to her and gave a glance into the crowd of Amis. Éponine looked, too, and blue eyes found hers.

She was momentarily lost, because even though they were hard as flint and obviously not pleased, those azure irises held her gaze for a little too long, and Éponine was left wondering why such a fiery man would eyes so much like the oceans blue that she thought she was drowning in them.

Enjolras' eyes moved to Marius' and he gave him an unimpressed look before turning back to the festivities. Éponine was snapped back to reality and she grabbed Marius by the hand - relishing in the feeling of it - before taking him out of the Musain. "Here," she whispered, slipping the paper with the address into his hand and seeing his face blossom with joy.

"Éponine," he breathed with such marvel in his voice that the gamine almost stopped breathing. At the look he gave her her heart almost stopped beating. "Thank you... thank you so much. You are the friend that has brought me to the gods; heaven is near!" He said this into her hair because he was hugging her, and Éponine closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. She committed it to memory because she knew that when he let go he would never come back to her. Once she stepped away from his embrace Marius would go to Cosette and he wouldn't even glance at her again.

"Go, Marius," she whispered to him.

"No! No, you have to come with me! I don't want to accidentally go to the wrong place," Marius said, earnestly, pulling away from her.

If he were anyone else Éponine would have made a cutting remark about how she hardly needed to take the time to write down the message if she was going to take him there anyway. But, he was Marius, and when had she ever declined him anything?

"Okay," she said quietly, gazing up into grey eyes. _Every word that he says is a dagger in me._

* * *

Éponine stopped watching Marius and Cosette coo at each other when it became too much for her. She turned away, and stared down at her dirty hands. _How could he have loved me, even without Cosette? I am worthless compared to him._ She jerked her head away from the mud in her nails and glared at the ground. _He was never mine to lose- why regret what could never be?_

She was so lost in her own self-pity that she didn't hear them coming. "What have we here?" drawled an all-too-familiar voice, grating in her ears. It was Brujon, one of her father's gang.

"Who is this hussy?" Éponine felt a surge of anger at her father's words. He didn't even recognise his own daughter!

"It's your brat Éponine! Don't you know your own kid?" Babet rolled his eyes. _Would you look at that, we actually agree on something_, the girl thought dryly before stepping away from the wall and blocking Rue Plumet from the Thenardier gang. She could not let them ruin Marius' happiness, or his most likely only chance to see Cosette before the revolution began.

"Don't!" she managed to exclaim, and Thenardier gave her an irritated look.

"What?"

"I know this house," Éponine babbled desperately. "There's nothing here, just an old man and a girl that live ordinary lives." Which was very far from the truth, because she knew they lead extremely eventful lives.

"Don't interfere," her father said sternly as he tried to push past her. She held her ground. "You've got some gall! Take care, young miss," he hissed warningly.

"She's going soft, it happens to all," Claquesous told Thenardier in a voice that he must've thought sounded wise.

"You're in the way, 'Ponine," Montparnasse said, in a gentler tone than her father. "Go home."

"_Don't call me that_," Éponine snapped. That right was reserved for her family only - and by family, she meant her sister and brother. "I'm going to scream. I'm gonna warn them here," she threatened, her stance shifting, coiled and ready to dodge a blow.

"One little scream," her father snarled, "and you'll regret it for a year." His words sparked both fear and fury in her.

"I told you I'd do it," Éponine said, in a moment of thoughtless panic, and she screamed as loud as she could.

As her father clamped one hand over her mouth and grabbed her throat with the other she heard Marius run from the scene. _Flee, Marius!_ she cried silently, willing him to escape without a scratch.

"You wait my girl, you'll rue this night," Thenardier growled in her ear, and the hand around her throat tightened. "Leave her to me. Make for the sewers!" he commanded the gang, and they scattered, leaving Éponine with the former innkeeper.

"I told you I'd do it," Éponine choked out. It seemed to be the only thing she was capable of saying.

"I'll make you scream all right," Thenardier said contemptuously. She smelt his stinking breath and saw every gap in his teeth.

He hit her, hard, across the face, and she fell to the ground. She bit her lip to keep from crying out in pain. He kicked her in the stomach and her mouth formed an 'O' in a soundless scream. By the time he'd pulled her back up she was sobbing and gasping for air, already in too much agony to care.

"I'm not done with you yet," he said, and Éponine closed her eyes and braced herself for the impact.

She felt herself fall once more when he knocked her down with another crack to the side of her head. She felt hot blood mix with the tears on her cheeks. _The things I do for you, Marius_, she thought despairingly to herself.

Éponine thought she heard footsteps pitter-pattering closer and closer to them, and hoped it wasn't another one of the gang members to help beat her up. When the she heard a shout of pain that was distinctly male and not her own she cracked open an eye.

Thenardier had been pinned to the wall, and blood was pouring from his nose. A tall man in a red coat was standing over the slightly crumpled figure of her father. He was begging for mercy. The blood dripped into Éponine's eyes and she could no longer see.

"Get out of here," her saviour bit out, and her father bolted. She was gathered in someone's arms as she registered the voice as extremely familiar.

"Wh... Who..." she managed to make out before she was shushed.

"Don't strain yourself. Just try to stay awake. You're going to be fine," the voice was soothing, and Éponine nodded, before promptly falling asleep.


	4. Croissants Save the Day

**Chapter Two - Croissants Save the Day**

**ConcreteAngelRoxHerHalo: **Hi there. I apologise about the clichéness of it all. I'll try to keep it more realistic and genuine (and here I am thinking of Aaron Tveit and Kerry Butler's amazing portrayal of the "real" relationship between Frank and Brenda in Catch Me If You Can).**  
AviationAce221: **Thank you for the helpful reviews. I really appreciate it, truly. To respond to the "I don't talk when I don't need to" thing, I've always felt that Enjolras has a lot to say (this is seen in the book), but doesn't say it when he doesn't think people need to know what he thinks. Though, of course, when it comes to the revolution he kind of has a spaz about it all. I will look into making less "Enjy the Saviour" and more "We Help Each Other Survive".

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

He really hadn't been planning to go to the _Voltaire_, but Grantaire had been craving pastries. The Café Musain served them, but ever since he broke the table two weeks ago Musichetta wasn't about to "serve that inebriated piece of shit anything else for the rest of his miserable life". Bossuet, who usually ended up having to run the errands, had left shortly after Marius had and the other Amis had, unsurprisingly, pretended to be busy with something else.

So, it was left to Enjolras to walk all the way to the _Voltaire_ to purchase a couple measly pastries for someone he wasn't really sure he even considered a friend. He'd agreed even though he'd wanted to finish the paper he was working on for law school, since it wasn't like he was about to get any of it done with Grantaire getting progressively louder by the second.

It just so happened the _Voltaire_ was two blocks away from the Rue Plumet and he heard that scream as if he'd been standing right next to her. And he'd recognised that scream. It was the one that had been haunting him for a month of a half. It had taken him just under ten minutes to find her, far too long in his opinion, but he did, and he had never been so thankful.

He really did have a habit for saving people in danger. By people he meant Eponine, who just made him plain angry because she had been taking it without fighting back.

It wasn't too hard to lose control and almost snap the neck of the man hitting her. But he wasn't about to kill someone who, for all he knew, hadn't done anything bad otherwise. Of course, he later regretted his moment of mercy, but during the time he hadn't known better.

* * *

Joly had been a lot less surprised than Enjolras had expected him to be, seeing as he'd returned to the Musain with a bloody, beat up Eponine instead of the _Voltaire's_ best croissants. Instead, the medical student had pursed his lips, touched his cane to the tip of his nose, and ordered for her to be taken to a bed.

"She can use mine," he said, because it seemed only proper, and because he didn't think he was going to be sleeping that night. Not with a paper to be finished.

This was what had surprised Joly and the other Amis listening in.

"Figures," Bahorel said, smirking, because he was Bahorel and didn't think before he spoke. "The first girl in his bed is going to be a half-dead one." Joly took Eponine from Enjolras' arms, which gave the leader of the Amis the chance to turn and narrow his eyes at the muscular revolutionary.

"I'm offering because I won't be using it tonight, anyway," Enjolras said. "She's also in serious danger."

The boxer didn't seem to think much of the fact, and shrugged. "Whatever you say, great revolutionary commander." He exchanged a look with Courfeyrac, the one they used when they were in on a joke Enjolras wasn't.

Meanwhile, Joly had enlisted the help of Combeferre, their usual secondary "doctor", upstairs to Enjolras' tiny room with minimal furnishings.

Enjolras stayed at the Musain mainly because the house he shared with his parents was far away, and he liked to spend most of his time sitting at the table in the corner of the secret meeting room. His parents, who were enormously rich, lived in a mansion on some obscure countryside. He could count on one hand the times he'd visited them since coming to Paris for his studies. Being a frugal man when it came to his own expenses, he'd ended up with a minuscule bedroom requiring ten francs a month. Being generous towards others, however, he took care to always give fifteen.

He watched his two friends carry the unconscious woman upstairs, Joly giving orders on how to hold her so that she wouldn't die on the spot. Joly was, after all, the only medical student Enjolras knew who was a hypochondriac and could also nurse you back to health in record time even with an outrageously exaggerated diagnosis.

Enjolras was hovering, unsure whether to accompany them (it was his room, after all) or to stay down and write his paper.

"Did you get my croissants, 'Jolras?" Grantaire called from across the room.

Enjolras gave him the most fearsome glower he could muster, decision made. "No. And _don't_ call me 'Jolras." He marched up the stairs after Joly and Combeferre, intent on escaping the drunk, who had just begun reciting Sophocles (which Enjolras was somewhat impressed he could do given his current state).

The moment Enjolras stepped into his bedroom, a large piece of torn, bloody cloth was thrown into his face. "Get rid of that and fetch something to replace it!" Joly's voice ordered from somewhere beyond the stench of the slums coming from the cloth.

Enjolras peeled it away from his forehead and realised it was the remains of Eponine's ruined brown dress. "Where would I find a dress? I don't know any women."

"Ask Musichetta," Joly said, not looking up from his applying of medicines. "Tell her I sent you."

Irritated at the idea of being "sent by Joly", Enjolras threw him and Combeferre a dirty look before tossing the soiled dress in a corner and leaving the room.

He didn't tell the Musain waitress Joly had sent him, but he did ask for a dress that would fit Eponine. The dress he was given was dark green and had a band of brown around the waist. She had also supplied him with a pair of brown sandals. They were simple, nothing special, but Musichetta had looked ecstatic as she gave it to Enjolras, and since Joly and Bossuet adored her so much, he took them with a gracious smile.

By the time Enjolras returned to his room Joly had stripped Eponine almost bare, and was stitching a wound on her stomach. Enjolras averted his eyes, but not before an eyeful of half-naked Eponine. His cheeks burned as he handed the dress to Combeferre, his gaze still fixed firmly on the floor.

Combeferre was looking amused. "You'd think he'd never seen a girl in her underclothes. Oh, but wait-"

Joly laughed and Combeferre grinned maniacally. Enjolras frowned. "It wasn't that funny," he said.

"It was, because it's true."

Joly looked up momentarily after his episode of laughter. "It's not surprising you helped a girl, but I will admit, the fact that you're so willing to aid us with her _is_." He moved on to wrapping her ankle with linen.

Enjolras made the mistake of glancing at Joly, who was still kneeling next to Eponine. He flushed crimson again and turned away.

"He's blushing like a girl," Combeferre laughed.

"You're sounding too much like Courfeyrac," Enjolras said, as if it were a bad thing. In reality they all loved Courfeyrac, who was basically the spirit of the entire group. "And it's because Grantaire is downstairs being unbearably annoying and I wouldn't be able to do anything useful anyway."

"I believe you," Joly said, in a tone that hinted the exact opposite. "You might as well go get more water for her, then."

"More linen wrap while you're at it!" Combeferre called, as Enjolras trudged out of the room with a sigh. He was supposed to be the leader of the French revolution, not an errand boy.

* * *

He'd finished the paper earlier than expected. Exhausted, Enjolras checked his pocket watch and saw that it was four in the morning which was relatively early for him - normally he worked until six. Perhaps he would actually get some sleep.

He dragged himself to his room and pushed open the door, only to see Eponine sleeping soundly underneath his covers. He would have jumped had he been too sleepy to care. He'd forgotten she was there.

Enjolras let himself stare this time, mainly because he was too tired to restrain himself.

Now that Joly had wiped almost all of the dirt and dried blood from her olive skin he could see that she was actually quite beautiful. He imagined with more nourishment (she was so stricken with malnutrition he could see her ribs through the sheets) she would have curvy hips and breasts. Her waist was astonishingly small, though from hunger or lucky genes, he wasn't sure. Her thick dark hair lay spread on the pillow in a mess of tangled waves. The shape and pallor of her face was gaunt and pale with prolonged hunger, but angled and rounded in the right places. He wasn't sure why Marius had never considered her as more than a friend, because not only was she utterly in love with him, she was really rather pretty.

Upon seeing the scars on her face, arms, and feet, which were the only parts uncovered by the blanket, however, Enjolras felt a familiar protective fury. Convincing himself he would have felt this way regardless of the woman, he sat himself down on the chair in the corner of the room, eyes still fixed on Eponine.

He fell asleep thinking not of his upcoming speech like he normally did, but of his new roommate.

* * *

Marius came late to their next Amis meeting.

"You're late," Enjolras said, not even looking up from the stack of papers in front of him.

"I know. I'm sorry." The young baron sat across from him, between Courfeyrac and Prouvaire.

"You were late last time, too, if I recall. And you left early," said the golden-haired student, now fixing the other man with a piercing look. "Would you like to provide a reason?"

Marius had the decency to look abashed. "I was at the Rue Plumet."

This alerted Enjolras, who sat up straighter, but displayed no further sign of recognition. He'd found Eponine around the corner from the Rue Plumet. He kept his face impassive, however, as he spoke. "What were you doing at the Rue Plumet, exactly?" The only person to notice Enjolras' reaction was Combeferre, who had always listened to him closely. Now he watched his best friend even more carefully.

"Well, meeting Cosette," said Marius, a little cautiously. He knew Enjolras didn't appreciate distractions. "She's the daughter of Monsieur Fauchelevent, or Monsieur Leblanc, as some of you know him."

"You will have no time to meet this Cosette if you wish to dedicate yourself to our cause," Enjolras said, preparing to give him another one of his lectures. "The funeral will be in a mere four days, and no doubt there will be a riot. Even the guards know that - _especially_ the guards. We'll need to be very careful in planning the rebellion, and we can't have anybody making a mistake. That means you can't be fretting about a woman, because it might get you killed."

He may not have agreed with Marius in terms of politics (one word: Napoleon), but he was the leader of the group. He felt responsible for all of them, and if one of them got hurt without cause under his direction, Enjolras would never forgive himself.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, Enjolras," Marius started, "being someone who doesn't believe in love, but Cosette is everything to me. I cannot live while we are apart."

_Oh, I believe in love_, Enjolras thought disdainfully. _I believe in love of my country. Love of Patria_. But he didn't say this to them. Instead, he gave a slight scoff. "She is more important than the whole of France?"

Marius looked like he wanted to hit him for a moment, but visibly breathed deeply to calm himself down. "I'm sorry for not being on time for the meetings, but I won't apologise for loving Cosette. I will, however, try to balance my time between her and the revolution the best I can. Anyway, she's said her father's considering moving away after what happened last night." Here he bowed his head to veil his despair at this fact, so Combeferre was once again the only one to see the alarm that flickered in Enjolras' eyes.

"What happened last night?" Combeferre couldn't help admiring the evenness in his tone and the emotion-devoid smoothness of his face.

"I was talking to Cosette, and someone - I don't know who, but it sounded like a woman - screamed, and Monsieur Fauchelevent came running out of his room, thinking it was Cosette. He doesn't know I've been seeing her, and he wouldn't be happy to find out. I left." It was only after Marius had finished speaking that he noticed the gradual darkening of Enjolras' eyes.

"The woman that screamed was your friend Eponine. She was attacked by a man in the alley near the Rue Plumet." Enjolras' voice was chilly and dangerous.

"What?" Marius leapt to his feet, shock lining his features. "I thought she'd left!"

"You knew she was there?" Enjolras' face was no longer expressionless but openly livid. Marius instantly regretted his words. "You knew she was there and you still fled?"

"I didn't know she was there," Marius defended. "I didn't know! I told her to leave ages before, she didn't need to be there anymore!"

It was the wrong thing to say. Enjolras' fingers curled into fists. He couldn't remember ever being so angry at somebody in public. "_You were the one that brought her there?_" he practically roared. Everybody watching the spectacle unfold jumped in their seats.

"Well, yes, but... why do you care?" Marius exclaimed in a last-ditch effort to deflect Enjolras' rage.

"Because, Pontmercy," growled Enjolras, using his last name in his ire, "now she's recovering from near death in my bedroom!"

Marius was effectively shut up and sat back down, face ashen. "Near death," he whispered to himself as other men snickered slightly at the words "my bedroom". Enjolras wasn't surprised to note that it had been Bahorel, Courfeyrac, and Grantaire.

Enjolras forced himself to calm down, relaxing his hands and wiping them on his vest. Within milliseconds his face had closed up into marble again. "Well," he said, voice controlled and seemingly unruffled. "We should move onto the meeting."

Heads around the table nodded hastily, afraid to provoke the wrath of an angry Enjolras after his previous display.

* * *

**AN: **Can I just express how happy I am about the helpful reviews?


	5. Enjolras, Part Deux

**Chapter Three - Enjolras, part deux**

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

After the meeting ended Marius approached Enjolras with a hesitant look on his angular face. The other man was organising his meeting papers and pretended not to see Marius standing there.

"Er," said Marius, after clearing his throat.

Enjolras looked up expectantly, not without a warning glint in his eye. He hadn't forgotten about their argument earlier than evening.

"Could I visit Éponine? You said she was in your room." Marius looked unnaturally timid for someone who was always professing his love for Cosette.

"She's having a much needed rest, having been unconscious since the attack at the Rue Plumet." Enjolras went back to organising his papers, his cold tone a clear sign of dismissal.

Marius winced at the information but soldiered on. "Just to see how she's doing."

"She's doing fine."

"Please?"

Enjolras looked up and leveled him with a glare, accentuated with the raising of a single eyebrow. Marius was a little jealous of this ability.

"No."

Marius hadn't had high hopes in the first place, and with Enjolras' obvious annoyance, he wasn't about to push him further. "Fine. Sorry."

Enjolras just grunted and waved him away.

It was after Marius had left that Combeferre finally pulled up a seat next to Enjolras. "You can stop pretending to be busy now," said the second-in-command of the Amis after a lengthy silence, only breached by the shuffling of papers.

Enjolras looked up, only his eyes visible over the pages. "i wasn't pretending."

"You never have to organise your meeting notes. You've just been rearranging them for the past five minutes to avoid talking to Marius," Combeferre said patiently, sipping calmly at his wine.

If Enjolras was embarrassed at being caught in the act, he didn't show it. Combeferre wasn't exactly surprised. "Fine, then. What is it?"

"I want to know what's been going on between you and Éponine." Combeferre said it like one would ask another how his mother was doing.

Enjolras' gaze shot up to meet his. "What are you talking about?"

Combeferre rolled his eyes. "Enjolras, I've never seen you so concerned or worked up about anything to do with Patria, much less a woman."

"You've not known me for long," countered Enjolras, and Combeferre noticed he hadn't denied it.

"Three years is plenty. Besides, I'm your closest friend." Which was true. Being second-in-command, he and Enjolras had gotten to be very good friends.

"There's nothing between us. I don't know where you got the idea, but if it's from my offering of my room to her, it was the gentlemanly to do."

"Right. Because you're such a _gentleman_," Combeferre said derisively, because he wasn't. Enjolras was more concerned about what was good for the people of France than he was about being gentlemanly.

"I am," Enjolras said, who never used sarcasm, and therefore didn't usually detect it unless he was paying special attention. "And what would you rather have me do? Leave her to bleed out and die?"

"Of course not," said Combeferre, "but you went to lengths to help Joly and I with her. You're never like that about anybody. I even saw you asleep in the chair angled towards her this morning- were you _watching_ her?"

"I told you, Grantaire was being distracting, and I wouldn't have been able to get work done. Of course I wasn't _watching_ her, I finished the essay early and decided to sleep in the chair instead." Enjolras chose that moment to conveniently forget about the five mintes he spent, in a daze of sleepiness, trying to memorise every contour of Éponine's face.

Combeferre decided he wasn't going to get a confession out of their stubborn leader. "Alright. But eventually you're going to realise Éponine is-"

"Ferre, I barely know her, except that she's in love with Marius." _And that she involves herself with a multitude of dangerous, violent men,_ Enjolras added to himself. "And I've already said many times that I'm dedicated to Patria and the revolution. There's hardly time for a relationship."

"Fine, fine," Combeferre relented, holding up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. "No need to bite my head off about it." He stood to go. "I'll leave you to your "organising"," he smirked, making quotation marks with his fingers.

"You've been spending too much time with Courf and Bahorel," Enjolras grumbled mutinously. "You haven't got to sound so smug."

Combeferre barked with laughter and left Enjolras alone, profoundly disturbed by his friend's words.

He truly didn't feel anything for Éponine except anger on her behalf towards the men who had attacked her, and Marius, who continually broke her heart without even knowing it. How had Éponine ended up in the place where Marius and Cosette met? With her immaculate sense of knowing where Marius was at all times (she had to have such a sense- otherwise how wold she be able to always find and follow the man?), she had to have known he and Cosette were meeting. She had even been needed there for a short period of time.

Why would she subject herself to the torture of watching her beloved with another? Perhaps Enjolras didn't know much about love, but his fellow Amis droned on about jealousy in it enough that he could imagine what it felt like: not good.

Had Éponine been there to simply see Marius be happy? Had she been the once to introduce them? The idea wasn't foreign to Enjolras. It sounded too much like him and his Patria; he would soon sacrifice all that he had, even his own life, so that the people of France would be free. Except, Marius was nowhere near what France was worth, and it made Enjolras upset that someone would sacrifice so much for one person. _He_ was doing it for millions. _He _was justified to be a martyr.

Enjolras looked down and realised he'd crumpled up half his notes in frustration. Muttering angrily under his breath, he smoothed the crinkled pages and roughly gathered them up in his arms before carrying them upstairs to his room.

Éponine had not moved from the position Joly had first arranged her in. Enjolras was once again stricken upon seeing her thin arms and the bones that jutted out of them. He made a mental note to tell Joly to give her food once she woke up. He ran his gaze down the outline of her body underneath the sheets, noticing something new every second that ticked by: the ends of her hair that curled where it would normally rest on her skin, the birthmark on the soft flesh of her inner arm, and how her second toe was longer than the first.

Quite suddenly he found himself right next to the bed, staring down at her sleeping form. He shook himself, feeling like a creepy lecher, and turned abruptly away from her to plop a cushion on the chair. He sat himself down and commanded himself to keep his eyes away from her, which of course made him think of her, and he fell asleep with her sleeping face in mind. Again.

**AN: I'm so sorry about the shortness. The next one will be MUCH longer. Promise.**


	6. Awake

**PART 2: ÉPONINE**

**Chapter Four - Awake**

**Tinmiss1939: **Thanks for an honest reply. Don't worry, I'm not insulted; after all, I asked for it :) In response to the song lyrics, I've actually toned it down as the story goes on, because later on it's more book than musical, though there's still elements of the musical in the writing. I hope that makes it a bit better. Bahorel is definitely fun to write, since he basically just says the first thing on his mind, and it's normally ridiculous.

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

There was a faint ticking noise next to her ear. She stirred, and blinked awake, brow furrowed at the incessant sound. Since when did she sleep near a clock in the dingy Thenardier residence?

Of course, she wasn't in the Gorbeau tenement. She realised this with a jolt, and her senses tingled with the effort of taking everything in, her head still resting on the pillow beneath it. Pillows? She was _definitely_ not in her parents' bile-smelling apartment. Then, where was she? How did she get here? More importantly, why was she wearing little to no clothes?

Éponine took a couple deep breaths and told herself not to think rashly. She blinked a couple more times before investigating the room more methodically.

She was in somebody's bedroom. A small wooden dresser with three drawers stood against the wall to her right. At the foot of the bed was a trunk, probably belonging to the owner of the room. A cushioned chair was placed in the far corner. Right next to her bed was an end table, on which was placed a lit oil lamp, a cup of water, and the ticking clock, which was rusty and dented in various places. A bookshelf next to the dresser caught her eye; it was stuffed full of books, stacks of papers, pots of ink, and quills. Whoever lived here wrote and read a _lot_.

So why was she in this room? People that wrote and read a lot and lived in small, incredibly tidy rooms like this didn't usually take girls home and leave them in their beds with just their underclothes on. Éponine struggled to sit up, but a sharp, white-hot pain in her wrist forced her back down with a gasp. She stared at it. It was bound in a cast of sorts, and though she couldn't see very well from her current position she could tell other parts of her body had been similarly wrapped. She felt cleaner than she had in months; there was no more dirt on her body, and it smelled like somebody had actually used soap on her. As soon as she registered this information, she remembered what had happened the last time she'd been awake.

Éponine closed her eyes just from the pain of remembering it all. Thenardier usually stopped after she couldn't stand on her own, but he had been merciless this time. What hurt even more was that she did this out of love for someone who didn't love her back, and certainly didn't know that she took this beating for his safety.

She opened her eyes, took another deep breath, and again regarded her situation with a clearer mind. So she'd been saved from her father by a mysterious man who had carried her here, presumably to where he stayed, though of course that didn't have to be the case. It seemed whoever it was had patched her up and taken off her clothes, obviously for the sake of said patching up. She frowned. It was then that she noticed the bloody rags in the corner: the mangled remains of her dress. Another dress lay next to it, not new but not too worn, neatly folded, along with a pair of sandals. Were those for her? Éponine didn't dare hope but they certainly looked her size, and as far as she knew there was nobody else staying here at the moment.

This thought process was broken when the door creaked open. The figure of a slender, bespectacled man with a cane stepped into view. He was holding a pitcher.

"Monsieur!" Éponine exclaimed, recognising Joly from the Amis meetings. She recalled Gavroche say he was a medical student; it was probably him that had treated her.

"Oh!" You're awake. That's good. How are you feeling?" Joly set the pitcher down on the dresser and bustled over to her, kneeling down to inspect her wrist.

"Beaten," said Éponine honestly, as Joly helped her into a sitting position. "But I'm used to it. Where am I?"

"Don't you recognise the cup?" Joly tapped the cup of water. She looked and read the word MUSAIN in capital letters, with only a little difficulty.

"The Café Musain?" Éponine said in amazement. "Why have you brought me _here_? I didn't know there were rooms available."

"Well, it wasn't me," replied Joly, who had finished checking her wrist and was now prodding her ankle.

Éponine winced. "Ow. That hurts."

"Sorry. You've sprained it, and your shoulder, too. Your wrist is broken, which is bad, but that's about the worst of it. Of course, there's the possibility of infection, and a variety of other transmittable diseases..." Joly stopped talking when he saw her expression. "Well, I'm sure you don't have those. You do, however, have a concussion, some serious bruising, both of which will go away with time and rest. The cuts will be healed fine, but you'll probably have a visible scar on your cheek."

In her mind's eye she saw her father deal a painful blow to the side of her head. "How long have I been asleep, Monsieur? And who was it that brought me here, if it wasn't you?" The curiosity was practically eating her alive.

"Two days and a half," Joly replied. "The man that saved you was-"

"Joly! I was going to tell you, but I forgot," a voice shouted up the stairs to the bedroom.

"That's him," grinned the medical student, as Éponine's eyes stretched wide.

She'd recognise that voice anywhere.

"You should bring her something to eat once she..." Enjolras trailed off as he came into the room and saw her staring back at him. "Once she awakes," he finished, a little awkwardly.

"Monsieur?" Éponine's voice was an octave higher and her eyes twice as wide.

"Call me Enjolras," the man said a little hoarsely. He wet his lips and cleared his throat.

"Right. Enjolras. Was it you who...?" Éponine still couldn't quite believe it. He had saved her, _again_. She wasn't sure how to feel about being saved, but for some reason she was glad it was him.

"Yes. Joly, what are you laughing at?" Enjolras turned his attention, narrow-eyed, to the wildly grinning man.

"Nothing. I'll fetch you some soup and bread," Joly said to Éponine. He left the room with a final smirk in Enjolras' direction.

"Thank you!" Éponine called as the door closed behind him.

Enjolras was still watching Éponine with an unreadable look in his eyes. She turned to him warily once they were alone. She twiddled her fingers nervously.

"I don't know how you found me, but thank you for doing it," Éponine said. "I probably would have died otherwise."

"That's why I saved you," Enjolras replied seriously. "Because you would have died." Eponine wondered if he was making a joke, but figured with his straight face it wasn't.

"I see." Éponine paused briefly, considering. "Well, I have a question to ask."

"Go ahead."

"Where are my clothes?"

She didn't expect Enjolras, who usually reacted to everything with a serious expression and severe voice, to blush a bright crimson and start stammering. "Your clothes. Well, uh, Joly took them. Um, medical purposes, you know, because he couldn't have done anything to you with your clothes on. Oh, that wasn't right. I meant operate on you while you were dirty. Not, of course, that you're dirty, at all." He bit his lip and rocked on his heels.

Éponine suppressed a snicker. "I completely understand," she said, but couldn't keep her lip from twitching. "It's not like I've never been naked in front of other people before."

At this, Enjolras' face turned a rather unhealthy-looking shade of dark red, and he quickly changed the subject away from her nudity. "Your clothes are there in the corner, but seeing as they can no longer be used, Musichetta - she works as a waitress here - has graciously given you one of her dresses. She said it would fit." He pointed to the folded dress.

"That's- that's very kind of her." Éponine was little overwhelmed, to say the least. She'd never experienced so much kindness in one day.

"Would you like to change into them?" Enjolras offered, bending and picking up the dress by the collar so that it tumbled into its full size and displayed itself before her.

She gazed at it. It was much better than the one she had previously owned, and actually had more than one colour. "That would be nice," she said finally, smiling up at him tentatively.

He stared back without returning the smile, but with that same unreadable look. She was struck anew by his statuesque beauty. If he hadn't had his head of curly blonde locks or crystal blue eyes, with his pale skin and virtually perfect formation he would have looked like a Greek statue. His solemn expressions and smooth features only made it all the more believable. And then he looked away, clearing his throat again. Éponine also looked down at her hands, face warm.

"I'll stand outside," Enjolras said, and backed away.

She made to say something along the lines of "sure" or "alright", but the words were trapped in her throat. "Aurl", she said instead in a strangled jumble of vowels and consonants.

If Enjolras heard this he pretended not to, because soon the door was shut and Éponine was on her own.

She realised too late she couldn't actually put the dress on, with her injures throbbing in pain. After several tries to put her arms through the sleeves, to no avail, she resigned herself for the ultimate embarrassment.

"Enjolras? Are you still there?" Éponine called from underneath the green cloth, her voice shaking at the end.

For a horrible moment she thought he'd left already, and that she would be stuck with a dress over her head, but then she heard the door slowly swing open.

* * *

Enjolras had just been about to go downstairs to the meeting room, steeling himself for endless amounts of teasing from the other students, when he'd heard her call his name.

She'd only said his name once and he'd already decided he wanted to hear her say it again. He didn't know why it sounded so much better when she said it, but the lilt of her street accent and the curl of her lip when she did was almost endearing. And Enjolras didn't use that word much. Or rather, he didn't use that word at all.

When she said it the second time he literally spun one-eighty degrees to answer her. Embarrassed at this response from himself, he ran a hand through his hair. What the hell was happening? Since when had he waited hand and foot on _anybody_? All he needed right now to clear his head was a new speech to write down or a paper to turn in. He shouldn't even reply to her, and pretend he had already gone downstairs.

But he couldn't resist.

He opened the door and his eyes instantly focused on the swell of her breasts, just covered by a piece of cloth wound several times around her chest. The sheets had fallen to her waist, and from there up it was all she was wearing. He wrenched his gaze to her face before she could notice his blatant staring, however, and realised he couldn't actually see her face. It was covered by the dress Musichetta had given her, which was hanging around her neck in a lump of cloth. He smirked a little to himself.

"Is there a problem?" he asked politely, closing the door before anybody else saw her half-naked and with a dress in her face.

"Obviously," she grumbled. "I've got a broken wrist and two sprained joints. I feel like an invalid."

The smile fell from his face and he felt a little guilty for laughing at her. "Of course. I'm so sorry. D'you... D'you need help?" Enjolras asked uncertainly, not sure if he should call for Musichetta.

"Yes. I was hoping you would." Éponine sounded suddenly timid, and Enjolras could understand why. He felt himself blush again and was glad she couldn't see him. They didn't know each other very well, and it wasn't proper for two single men and women to weren't a couple to see each other bared, much less so such an intimate thing as help the other change their clothes.

He told her what he was thinking. "It's improper," he said after an uncomfortable pause.

She suddenly lost her shyness in a flare of sharp words. "Oh please, you've already taken off my clothes, it can't be any more improper to put them back on," Éponine retorted defensively.

When she put it that way, Enjolras couldn't really see the fault behind it. "Alright then," he hesitantly agreed.

He walked to her side and knelt down, holding the sides of the dress. "I'm going to pull it down," he told her.

"Go ahead."

Enjolras felt her jump when his cold fingers brushed against her warm skin, and he felt his cheeks get hot. _How is her skin so soft?_ He bit his lip and gently lifted her arm, leading it through the sleeves. Was it just him, or did she shiver? "Did I hurt you?" he asked quickly, freezing in place. His fingers tightened ever so slightly on her silky skin and nearly shuddered himself, but managed to restrain it.

"No. No, keep going," Éponine said, her voice several pitches higher.

Enjolras furrowed his brow at the other arm, the one with the sprained shoulder. "This might hurt," he said, and reached for it, clamping his teeth even harder into his bottom lip.

* * *

She had to concentrate very hard to keep her breathing even. It really was not fair how just the touch of his cool fingers could increase her heart rate by four times. She could feel the hairs on her skin stand on end, prickling at the painfully pleasing sensation of his hand on her arm. What was going on? The effect Marius had on her paled in comparison to this; she would blush every time he touched her, but that seemed trivial to the near-dizziness that she experienced when in contact with _Enjolras _of all people.

When he gradually tugged the dress over her head, her face broke out in a smile at the expression on his face. His eyes were narrowed in concentration, and he was biting his lip so hard she was afraid it would start bleeding. (Of course, the way it accentuated the fullness of his bottom lip was highly distracting as well, but she tried her best to ignore that.) He was actually trying very hard not to hurt her.

Which, it turned out, wasn't too difficult because she was so disoriented by the combination of his touch and the look on his face that she didn't feel any pain at all. She was so out of it that she almost missed his next words.

"Do you want me to pull it all the way down?" Enjolras was saying when she snapped back to attention. Éponine was almost disappointed at the steadiness of his tone; was he not affected at all? She was practically faint with the feeling, and he had betrayed no sign of even noticing.

"Yes, thank you," she said anyway. She hadn't realised this required her to elevate herself so that the dress could go past her hips. Or that Enjolras would need to take away the blanket covering her underwear and unclothed legs.

"I have to take the covers away," he said once this came to them at the same time. She noticed a faint redness in his ears and almost smirked to herself.

"Of, that's fine," Éponine said with forced nonchalance. She didn't want him to see her legs and waist. Or rather, the scars on them, but it was too late now.

Enjolras peeled away the blanket and his eyes widened. "Éponine..." he whispered, eyes running along one particularly nasty one near her knee.

"It wasn't the first time I'd been beaten," Éponine said frankly, and was proud of her calm voice (considering that her name from his mouth should be illegal, it sounded so good).

"Who does it?" He was actually reaching out to touch one. She prayed that if he did she wouldn't jerk violently and kick him in the face.

"My father, mostly. My mother never used to, but now if she's feeling especially frustrated one day she'll join in on the fun," she said plaintively with a touch of sarcasm. It went unnoticed.

"Was it your father that I found you with at the Rue Plumet?" Enjolras' ice blue eyes were suddenly staring into her own muddy brown ones and she felt suddenly exposed.

"Uh, yes," she stuttered, looking away, feeling much safer once she wasn't drowning in the cobalt depths.

"I should have killed him that night," Enjolras hissed, clenching the hem of her dress with one fist. Éponine was mildly surprised at the fury in his face, which was suddenly the only emotion on the marble surface. "What kind of father would do this to his own daughter? He's a monster! He doesn't-"

"You shouldn't have killed him," interrupted Éponine matter-of-factly, "because then Mother would do all the beating, and she's much worse."

He stared at her incredulously. "Éponine, you can't stay with them anymore!"

"I have a sister to take care of," she said. "Azelma. We share the beatings. If I leave, not only would she have to do all the work, she would get twice the beatings she already gets. She's smaller than I am. She wouldn't last a week."

Éponine had taken care of Azelma for as long as she could remember. Their mother adored them, but she really had no idea how to take care of children. Once Cosette was bought by M. Fauchelevent, the Thenardieress decided that they had to start working and began pushing them to do so (read: steal) for the family. Azelma had been eight. Gavroche, her other sibling, had always been stronger and more independent than his two older sisters, which was most likely due to the Thenardieress' hatred of male children. Éponine took care of him until he was five, and then he ran off with a group of gamins to pursue his own adventures.

"She can come with you," Enjolras pressed on. "You can both leave."

Épnoine shook her head again. "The reason why she takes our parents' orders is because she's too scared not to, and too weak to survive the punishment if she fights. Our parents are the only people Zelma's afraid of. She would be too afraid to come. Which is a shame because she's better than I am at sneaking around."

"She wouldn't have to be afraid anymore if she left. You could live in the Musain. You could live in my room. I'll pay the rent. I'll find somewhere else." Enjolras spoke so rapidly and earnestly Éponine could scarcely keep up.

_Was he offering to give them a place to live?_ she thought, horrified. "I don't want your money, Monsieur," Éponine rejected, more harshly than she'd intended.

"I'm not giving you money, just a place to stay," Enjolras shot back. "And I've already said, don't call me Monsieur." He looked cross at the title.

"Sorry. Enjolras, then." Éponine rolled her eyes. "I don't want a pre-paid apartment, either. Zelma and I have been taking care of ourselves fine. We don't need help."

"You've been unconscious for more than two days. I'd call that less than fine," he deadpanned, sounding suspiciously close to sarcastic. They glared at each other, Éponine's state of undress forgotten.

"_Enjolras_," Éponine began, sufficiently annoyed, "_We don't need your_-"

The door swung wide open. Courfeyrac, Bahorel, and Joly stumbled into the room. Enjolras wrenched the dress down to her knees before practically flying to the wall, looking more than a little flustered.

The newcomers regarded the scene with astonished eyes.

"You've fucked her already?" Bahorel was the first to speak.

Enjolras and Éponine wore identical expressions of horror. "No!" They shouted simultaneously.

"We were..." Éponine looked at Enjolras with wide eyes.

"I was helping with her dress," he said lamely.

"Right," Courfeyrac said, drawing out the word with a never-ending grin on his face. Enjolras scowled at them and opened his mouth to defend himself when Joly knocked Courfeyrac to the side.

"Out of the way!" the medical student commanded, balancing a bowl of soup and a plate of bread and cheese in his arms. Éponine's eyes were glued to it. She'd never eaten more than a couple rinds of moldy bread a day. "Apologies for taking so long with the food. These two" - here he jabbed a finger at Courfeyrac and Bahorel, both of whom tried to look as innocent as possible - "kept asking incessant questions."

Enjolras sighed, and brushed himself off, his face once more the marble mask. "I have work to do. There's an afternoon meeting tomorrow. Someone will have to tell Feuilly about it, so that we know whether he can make it or not. We'll be discussing the recruiting, so everybody must attend." He emphasised the last part with a meaningful look at Courfeyrac, who lived with Marius. "I'll be downstairs." With a nod at Éponine, he made a swift exit and virtually ran down the stairs.

Éponine was a little hurt by this cold transformation. Where was the soft, careful, easily embarrassed boy who had been so intent on giving Éponine and her sister a better life? It seemed he had disappeared behind the composed, constant facade. "Thank you for the food," she said to Joly to hide the hurt.

"You're very welcome. Courfeyrac, Bahorel, if you're just going to disturb her, you might as well leave." The cheerful man gave the two other men an unusually stern look, one that he used while exercising his rights as a "doctor", and they slunk away obediently. "Éponine, I'm putting you on full bed rest for the next two nights, at least," Joly said, setting the tray down. He tapped his cane on his nose, a habit Éponine had noticed in him, and smiled at the waif.

"It's a good thing Enjolras brought you here almost right after the incident," he said. "Most of the bruises, cuts, and even the sprained ankle should be healed by Lamarque's funeral."

Éponine tilted her head, confused. "What happens at Lamarque's funeral?"

"Enjolras is planning the first rebellion there," Joly replied. "Which means people will be hurt, which means I will have to be available, and thus I won't be able to keep you as first priority."

A rebellion. "It's actually starting?" said Éponine in wonder. She never really believed in the revolution, because it probably woudn't make much of a change to her lifestyle except a sudden influx of death. So she hadn't considered the possibility of it happening, and now that it was, she had to face what might happen to her and the people she cared about - that is to say, Azelma, Gavroche, Marius, and now perhaps even the other Amis.

Joly laughed merrily. "I hardly believe it myself. Everybody's excited. Well, maybe except for Grantaire, but he's not normally excited for anything but his favourite wine."

Éponine cracked a smile. This man was so full of happiness for someone heading into probable doom that she felt incredible admiration for him. She'd never met someone so full of the simple joy of existing. He was friendly to others because it made them happy, which in turn made him happy. It was infectious, and her smile grew into a grin.

She thought she could become friends with him, if she spent more time with him. In fact, she thought she could become friends with the entire Amis, the band of loyal, earnest, joyful revolutionaries who saw Éponine not as a common street urchin, but as a woman who had simply lead an unfortunate life.

Éponine could finally be happy.


	7. To Die

**Chapter Five - To Die**

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

Bed rest, Éponine soon learned, was less than satisfactory. First of all was the problem of rest in itself- she was a waif, used to being constantly moving, running, thinking up new ways to trick someone out of their money. Staying still for more than three hours at a time was incredibly frustrating. Besides that, when she wasn't being paid a visit by one of the Amis (they were all very nice to her, and perfectly willing to sit and chat with the injured girl), she was sleeping off the pain. When she wasn't sleeping, she reflected. And more often than not, she came up with bewildering conclusions.

Most of the time, she thought of how her father would be beating Azelma to a pulp, and how he would beat _her_ to a pulp when she finally went back. It was mostly brought on by concern for her sister, who would be responsible for collecting a minimum of five sous instead of the usual three sous, and it was hard enough to get more than two a day. Éponine tried to concoct a plan to return during the wee hours of early morning and received the beatings for Azelma when her father was hung over and at his weakest, and then sneak back out. It would require perfect timing, however, because Thenardier was a very intelligent man with a constantly working mind, and it was only in the ten-minute period of alcohol-induced morning sickness that wasn't thinking straight. The plan never succeeded, however, because someone had stationed a guard, always one of the Amis, after her first failed escape attempt.

She also thought of Marius, which was nothing new. What surprised her, however, was that every time she thought of how beautifully grey his eyes were, another pair of eyes, a piercing sky blue, would dominate her thoughts, and these eyes were much brighter and filled with a flame only one person in the universe possessed. Why had Marius, in her thinking, become connected to Enjolras? During the time when she'd usually despair over her unrequited love for her neighbor the baron Marius Pontmercy, Éponine found her thoughts drifting to the golden-haired leader of the insurgents and his changing demeanors: sometimes harsh and brittle, sometimes soft and sensitive (this side only revealed itself when they were alone). Sometimes cold, sometimes hot.

He confused her, and she didn't like it. Still, she thought of him and his touch and her name on his lips.

Éponine discovered a more than sufficient distraction to her musings: food. Musichetta, who had taken to visiting her lover's patient as well, kept the end table full with a nearly constant supply of breads, meats, cheeses, fruits, and soups. Musichetta wouldn't tell her who paid for this food, but Éponine strongly suspected a certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed revolutionary.

She ate a little more every meal, her appetite growing like a child's, and soon she began to become healthier. She started to look less like a young boy, and more like a woman. Her thighs, hips, and breasts filled out ever so slightly, though traces of the gauntness remained. Musichetta commented happily on her restoration and seemed proud of her part in it. Éponine found herself becoming closer to the thoughtful, genuine woman, which was of course unsurprising, seeing as she was her only female companion.

True to her prediction, Éponine grew more and more fond of the other Amis, each of whom earned a place in her heart. Joly, of course, came regularly for check-ups and she welcomed the cheerful man, who almost always stayed to talk about his troubles with Musichetta. He'd recently had an argument with her, and she still wasn't speaking to him.

Bossuet often accompanied him, seeing as they were best friends and did everything together. He was the only bald man of the group, and had by far the worst luck, but he never seemed to be upset about it. If anything, he was amused by his bad fortune, and pretended to greet it with a "hello again, evil genius".

Courfeyrac, sometimes with her brother, also visited often. The playboy behavior that used to irritate Éponine now made her laugh, now that she knew he only ever meant well and that it was just to keep him confident and optimistic. She loved to see him play with her brother; it was comforting to know that though she couldn't be around Gavroche much, he had an older brother figure to raise him.

Bahorel was always entertaining to have around. They engaged in many battles of wit, and made many memorable jokes that Éponine still snickered to think of. He promised to teach her how to box once she was able to stand up, but made her swear not to tell Joly about it, who would surely have his head for encouraging unsafe behavior in a patient.

Combeferre was always polite and invigorating to talk to, just because he was such a quietly brilliant and philosophical man. He was an avid player of chess, and told Éponine he would introduce her to the game once he bought a board of his own (he had long been using Jehan's). He often brought a new book for her to read, because his book collection was apparently "much more extensive and of higher quality than Enjolras'".

Jehan was probably the nicest, sweetest person she knew, and also the most awkward. He was incredibly shy, and it had taken ten minutes for them to start an actual conversation. He soon proved extremely talented once he began to talk about himself: he played the flute, the violin, could paint, write poetry, and compose music. Éponine was still waiting for a promised copy of his latest poem.

She hardly saw Feuilly. He was a fan maker who did his business in the streets, from early in the day to late at night, stopping only for an hour or so at the Musain for a meeting or a quick gathering of his friends. He earned three francs a day. Like Éponine, he was against any charity offered by the wealthier Amis. They spoke about the people of France and the struggles they went through each day, which both she and Feuilly knew all too well.

Grantaire, or "R" as many called him ("It's a pun. Grantaire, Grand R, you see?"), was almost always drunk. This made for hilarious company. While many others found it obnoxious and over-exuberant, Éponine thought he was funny, and admired his ability to be both carefree and startlingly aware of the world around them. Though they didn't see each other much, the times they did were some of her favourites.

Neither Marius nor Enjolras visited her.

* * *

He knew he had developed something of a soft spot for her. He was different around her; he displayed his real emotions (God forbid!) and he couldn't help but obey what she said. This made her dangerous and a distraction from what was important at hand: the revolution.

Enjolras resolved to distance himself from her and work on planning the rebellion for the 5th of June.

He had the other members work hard as well. On top of their regular schoolwork (or in Feuilly's case, his work), the Amis gave speeches, tried to talk influential members of their society into joining the cause, and drew plans for the funeral. Courfeyrac enlisted Gavroche's help, and the little gamin collected useful intelligence by spying on the various city guards and soldiers. Even Musichetta helped by eavesdropping on the customers of the Musain. Enjolras commanded Jehan to find something to inspire the group, and the musician composed a song to lift their spirits. The Amis made it their official anthem.

Enjolras not only received orders to work on various things, he assigned himself tasks to keep busy. Eventually he was buried up to his neck in jobs. He barely found time to eat.

He became stressed and constantly on edge, snapping at anybody and everybody who irritated him in the slightest. Grantaire took the brunt of the insults. The drunk never complained or said anything back, and every day he took his place next to Enjolras like a loyal dog. The Amis wondered why he did, and Grantaire said he would always be there, no matter what Enjolras said to him.

The leader himself felt a little guilty, but quickly drowned his feelings in sketching out a detailed map out a map of the place the funeral would be held.

* * *

When Enjolras and Marius finally did see Éponine, they came together in a whirl of shouted words and stomping feet.

Joly had just informed her that though she should try to keep from moving too much, she was officially relieved from bed rest.

"I strongly suggest you wait to be admitted," came Enjolras' voice, cold and full of foreboding, not long after the hypochondriac had left.

"The others never needed permission!" Marius ejaculated, clearly angry. Éponine's ears perked up like a cat's, and her heart pounded in her chest. She, after all, was still in love with him.

"The others didn't get her almost killed," countered Enjolras. They were getting progressively louder and nearer.

Did Enjolras think it had been Marius' fault she'd been attacked? It had been nobody's fault but her own.

"In the name of God, Enjolras! It wasn't my fault!" Marius finished saying this and the door flew open.

Éponine felt like a mouse caught in a trap. The two men, who had obviously been glowering at each other, had turned their eyes to her. This felt all too similar to her daydreams: two vastly different faces fighting for dominance in her mind.

"Marius!" she finally exclaimed, pretending she hadn't heard a word of their argument. "It's a pleasure to see you." She didn't like the triumphant look he threw at Enjolras, whose face had closed up again.

"It's wonderful to see you're alive and will," Marius smiled warmly, coming towards her with arms outstretched.

"I am," beamed Éponine, lying through her teeth. Her shoulder gave a flash of pain as he gave her a quick hug.

She appraised the man, looking him up and down. He was just as she remembered: dark and neatly trimmed hair, high cheekbones, and eyes always full of compassion. He was happy. As Marius released her she realised why- the feminine scent of perfume that went with him meant he'd recently been with Cosette.

The resent that coursed through her was more for Marius than the lark. It caught her unawares; she'd never felt anything but love for Marius before.

"I hope you're not still hurting?" Marius said hopefully. Behind him, she spotted Enjolras discreetly rolling his eyes.

"I feel no pain," Éponine lied again, just to please him. This time, Enjolras snorted quietly in derision. She really shouldn't have believed he would buy her lies. Marius was gullible enough, but the perceptive Enjolras could scent lies like a trained hound.

"That's good." Marius was still smiling. Éponine cherished moments like these, when Marius' attention was on her, and not Cosette. Especially now, it felt only fair, since she had risked her life for him.

"Why don't we let her have her rest," Enjolras cut in rudely, his words more of a statement than an offer.

"I think she's well enough to talk a bit more," Marius ground out, suddenly vexed.

"In that case, let's allow Mademoiselle to tell us herself," Enjolras drawled, exaggerating "mademoiselle" just to annoy her.

Éponine felt indignation well up within her. How dare he make her pick a side? She turned to Enjolras with a question of her own, eyes narrowed, "Why do you think it is his fault?"

Comprehension flickered in his eyes. He now knew she'd heard them talking. "Isn't it?" he inquired.

"No," said Éponine. She surprised all of them, including herself, by lifting a hand to silence Marius when he opened his mouth to gloat. "It was my own. I was the one that screamed."

Marius looked confused, which had been her intention. She didn't want him to know she'd taken the beating to save him and Cosette. It was, after all, extremely uncomfortable to find out that someone had nearly died for you while you were having fun with your lover. However, she wanted Enjolras to know, and she knew with his quick mind he would extract the meaning from her words.

He seemed to be frozen to the spot. Éponine watched him carefully for any reaction. "Your own fault," he echoed at last. His face contorted in an expression of pure rage, but went back to normal so quickly she thought she'd imagined it. "I see." His voice was monotone.

"Actually, messieurs, I'm feeling a little tired now," Éponine said, squinting her eyes so that it looked like they were drooping with sleepiness. "I'd appreciate the time to rest."

Marius nodded quickly and stood back up. "Of course. I'll see you later, Éponine." He looked to Enjolras expectantly.

"I need to get my notes," the blonde said. "I'll meet you downstairs." His voice brooked no arguments and Marius disappeared quickly.

Enjolras had obviously gathered she had wanted to see him alone, because Marius had once again been the only one to fall for her act.

They stared at each other, one anticipating a reaction, one looking emotionless.

Finally Enjolras spoke. "Why did you do it?"

"My father and his gang, the Patron Minette, were about to rob the Rue Plumet. I didn't want them hurting Marius." Éponine decided she might as well tell the truth, because he would see through a lie anyway.

"No. Why did you do it for Marius?" Enjolras was completely still, having been that way since she'd told him how she'd screamed.

Éponine had her answer ready, and she replied without hesitation. "I would do anything for him. I'd die for him."

You would die for a single person?" Enjolras couldn't seem to grasp the concept.

"Yes." Éponine paused, trying to think of something he could relate to. "Ah! It's like you and the revolution. You always talk about how you would be a martyr for your mistress Patria."

"Patria is my mistress, that is true," Enjolras agreed. "But she stands for the entire population of France. Marius is insignificant in comparison. _I _am insignificant in comparison."

Éponine didn't think it was possible for Enjolras to be insignificant in any way, shape, or form, but she understood what he meant. "When you are in love with somebody," she said slowly but surely, "That person becomes more important than the entire Universe."

Enjoras stared, and swallowed before answering. "And is that what you are? In love?"

"I am in love with him," Éponine said confidently. Something nagged at her in the back of her mind, but she ignored it.

"But you doesn't love you back." He said it plainly, causally, but Éponine still felt the impact of the words.

"No," she said, a little sadly. She'd long accepted the fact, but that didn't mean she had to be happy about it.

"So why do you love him?"

"It was such a simple, innocent question. Éponine found it unanswerable. "He's nice to me. He's considerate," she said at long last. It wounded bad even to herself. The voice nagged again.

Enjolras raised a single eyebrow. She was reminded of Gavroche, who also could do the same. "And that's why you're in love with Marius Pontmercy?"

"I"m in love with Marius Pontmercy," confirmed Éponine. They stared at each other, and then Enjolras looked down at his fists. They were tightly clenched against his legs.

"I have people to meet," said Enjolras. And then he was out the door before she could say anything else.

She tried to get some rest (because she was actually a little tired) or focus on saving Azelma, but her brain was stuck thinking of what Enjolras had asked her. _So why do you love him__?_

She had not been able to find an answer. The voice nagged even louder. It was trying to tell her something, but what?

Marius had first caught her eye because he was attractive. He still was, but now that he'd seen other attractive men (Courfeyrac was ruggedly handsome, Jehan was delicate and beautiful in his own way, and Enjolras was a fucking angel), he no longer ranked so high in her standards. He was very nice to her, but so were the other Amis. He respected her as a person and didn't think her below him just because of her social status, but that wasn't so different from the Amis either. Some of others, including Enjolras, Jehan, and Combeferre, even called her mademoiselle, which though she hated, she was flattered by. The voice that was shouting something to her was suddenly understandable.

The missing piece had been found and now it clicked into place: _She wasn't in love with Marius._

He had been an infatuation. She was in love with the idea of him, or rather, what he represented to her. He was her first taste of a better life, and of equality and freedom. She became addicted to the world and opportunity, and thus, she was addicted to him. Then the Amis came by and she realised that he was just one of the many poeple out there that also believed in respect and equal rights.

This revelation made her jump out of the bed. Her ankle wobbled unsteadily, but she hardly noticed. She had to tell Enjolras. She didn't know why, but she trusted her instincts and right now it was _vital_ that Enjolras knew she did not love Marius.

Éponine half ran, half limped down the steps to the secret meeting room. Her eyes roamed it wildly.

The Amis that were in the room at the time (Joly, Bossuet, Combeferre, Jehan, Bahorel, and Grantaire) stared at her as if she were insane.

"I told you to try not to move around," Joly said disapprovingly. She didn't hear him.

"Where is he?" Éponine demanded, hair flying, chest heaving.

"Who?" asked Bahorel, but Combeferre just pointed to the door.

"Enjolras left just two minutes ago. I don't know where he went." The room chuckled collectively; they didn't expect Éponine to start racing for the door.

"Wait, what?" Grantaire gaped as Bossuet called after her:

"You've forgotten your shoes!"

Éponine glanced down at her feet, which were indeed bare. It hadn't even occurred to her. She'd lost her father's old boots weeks ago, and she'd been going barefoot since. _Whatever_, she thought, and kept sprinting.

She turned a couple heads as she flew down the streets of Saint Michael, shoeless, bandaged, and half crazed. Every time she saw a red ipece of clothing she would think it was Enjolras' military vest or his maroon coat, but it never was.

Ten minutes later she slowed to a halt, breathing heavily, ankle sore and every once in a while giving a twinge of pain. He was nowhere to be found and she was pretty sure she'd been going around in circles.

Just when she was about to give up, she saw another flash of red and looked up half-heartedly. It was Enjolras, rounding the corner. Éponine shouted "Monsieur!" and followed, nearly tripping in her haste. She called his name when she was close enough and he whirled around, shock evident in his face.

"Éponine!"

"Enjolras, I-" she fell into a coughing fit. He reached her in two quick strides and grasped her arms with incredible gentleness.

"Are you alright? What are you doing here?" She was glad to hear the concern in his tone.

"I have to tell you something. I made a mistake. I thought I loved him, but-" Éponine was bent over from the sheer force of another set of wracking coughs.

"Regain your breath before saying anything else," he said. It sounded like a command, and she obeyed.

She gulped lungfuls of air before finally speaking again. "I've realised: I don't love Marius. I was in love with the idea of him: someone who lived a better life and didn't care that I was poor and still was my friend. It wasn't love at all, it was obsession!"

The words were tumbling out of her and soon she was saying things she didn't even know she knew. "And I said that I would die for Marius- that's still true. I would, because he's my friend. I would put my life on the line for any of the Amis! That means I love them, and that's different from being _in _love with them. If I loved someone, and if they were the most important thing to me, I would _live_ for them, too. To die is one thing. To live is another."

Éponine finished her speech, smiling up at a shell-shocked Enjolras. "And _you_- I don't know how, but _you_ made me realise it!" With this she threw her arms around the wide-eyed man, and held him tightly to herself.

* * *

Enjolras had never seen her so exhilarated.

He hadn't wanted to go anywhere in particular, just away from the Musain, and away from _her_. It made him indescribably irate to know that Éponine had willingly gone to accept her father's punishment, simply because she loved Marius. He wasn't sure whether to be angrier that she loved him, or angrier that she'd gotten hurt for such a reason. After considering these choices further, he decided he'd be angry at himself for getting angry in the first place.

He'd needed to get away before he threw a fit in front of her.

Enjolras stormed out of the Musain without a second glance behind him, picked a direction, and kept going. He didn't have a certain destination. How she managed to find him, he had no idea. But when she did, he'd been unsure whether to yell at her or wrap her in his jacket she was shivering so much, but then she'd interrupted him.

What came out of her mouth was the best thing he'd ever heard (it even rivaled hearing her say his name). She finished and stared at him with big, starry, dark eyes. Enjolras experienced a strange, rushing sensation, as if he had stumbled upon some great understanding without knowing what it was yet. His stomach churned, and the world around him blurred as if he was moving past it at a tremendous speed. He was falling into a deep abyss, and Éponine was waiting for him at the bottom of it.

She didn't love Marius Pontmercy, _she never had_, and somehow this was the most important thing.

She wrapped herself around him and he automatically returned the hug, as if he hugged people on a regular basis (he didn't). They stood there in each other's embrace in the middle of the street. People pushed past them with disgruntled noises, and some pedestrians shouted for them to stop blocking the road, but Enjolras felt none of it.

Nothing but Éponine.

* * *

**AN: It's moving fast, I know. I don't know if you guys like that or not.**


	8. Look At Her

**Chapter Six - Look At Her**

**keepcalmandreadhp:** To be honest, I've always thought that if Enjolras had lived in the original plot, he would have wished to die. After all, Marius had Cosette and his grandfather; Enjolras had _nobody_. He was an only child, lived alone, and was never interested in being in a relationship. He'd have been ridden with guilt and frustration and misery and that's much worse than being dead. You can take what you will from that :)  
**Smiles1998:** Thanks for the feedback!  
**idreamadreamtoo:** Thanks loads! I'll try to keep you happy with the writing :)  
**FreeToRun:** Wowowow you're so awesome! Thanks for making my day better!

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

"Thank you," Éponine said once they broke apart.

"You're welcome," Enjolras replied, though he didn't know what he'd done to help her reach her epiphany.

They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, and his brain was whirling with something unfamiliar: complete chaos.

"I need to return to my parents," she said. "Azelma needs me."

Enjolras knew he couldn't do anything to stop her, so he settled for a compromise. "Let some of us come with you, so you won't get hurt."

Éponine rolled her eyes as if she thought it was a ridiculous notion. "I've been gone for five days. I'll get _very_ hurt."

"Don't say that," he bit out, hating the image of a bruised and bloody Éponine that came to mind.

She gazed at him, searching for something in his face. She must have found it, because she heaved a sigh and said, "My father will have his gang members with him. They won't back down from a fight. They might even be looking for one."

"We won't back down, either. Besides, it'll be good practice for the 5th." Enjolras had gone through days and days of strenuous planning and organising for the funeral. June 5th, whether it worked or not, was going to be epic.

"Joly told me about the rebellion. I was wondering if I could-" Éponine was cut off when someone shouted her name.

"Éponine! Is it really you?" A tall man with a deceptively skinny build (he was very strong in reality) was scurrying down the street. His top hat wobbled precariously on his head.

Éponine's face turned white, blanching in fear. Enjolras recognised the hat and the curling sideburns, and felt a growl build in his throat.

"Father," Éponine said sweetly, turning with a fake smile.

"Where have you been? Your mother's been worried sick!" He drew the girl into a tight embrace. Enjolras noticed he dug his nails into her back and narrowed his eyes. This worried-father facade was not about to work on him.

"Just staying with a few friends," said Éponine, her smile straining to stay put.

"Ah! Your friends, of course," the father said warmly. "Next time, you have to tell me where you're going, though." _Not likely_, thought Enjolras, gritting his teeth. The protective lion inside of him roared and bared his teeth.

"I will." She seemed to be making her replies as short as possible.

"And have you gotten skinnier? I'll have to feed you more!" Thenardier laughed uproariously and Enjolras knew he was planing to starve as well as beat her when she returned. Thenardier thumped her on the back. Éponine fell forward and Enjolras caught her just in time.

"And who might you be?" Thenardier turned to him with a threatening glint in his eye.

Enjolras faced him with flinching. "Enjolras. Pleased to make your acquaintance." He twitched his lip in a polite smile.

"I might have you meet the rest of the family," Thenardier said, giving a toothy grin and displaying a mouthful of rotted teeth.

"I would be my pleasure," Enjolras replied understanding the veiled meaning: the Patron Minette would be there when they got back. He squeezed Éponine's shaking arms to reassure her.

"I'll show you home," Thenardier said, and began to lead them away. Éponine gulped in fear.

Enjolras held onto her wrist as they followed him, keeping himself between the frightened girl and her father.

* * *

"I'll be back as soon possible." Enjolras whispered to her once they reached the Gorbeau tenement.

"Where are you going?" Éponine whispered back, panicked, but Enjolras had left. She shivered. Without him there Thenardier would surely beat her.

"Home sweet home, dearie," Thenardier mocked with a snigger as he went in before her. She repressed a shudder and took a deep breath before stepping in after him.

Azelma was scrubbing the floors. She was the only one in the family who had inherited their mother's flaming orange hair, frizzy and uncontrollable. She often pulled it away fro her face with a rag that she tied at the back of her neck, especially when doing the chores. The youngest Thenardier sister, like the rest of the children, had their father's thin frame, but was also very short, making her the physically weakest in the family. She got sick often, which was all the more reason for Éponine to take the bulk of the work.

Now Azelma was kneeling on the dirty floor trying to scrape away a lump of something sticky and unrecognisable. The Thenardieress was sitting by the dirty window watching her work, mug of ale in hand.

Thenardier's massive boots plonked down on the space in front of Azelma, narrowly missing her fingers. It sprayed mud everywhere, destroying half of her hard work. The small 17 year old girl visibly slumped in disappointment.

When she caught sight of her sister, she scrambled to get up, barely containing her relief and joy. "Éponine!" she cried, hugging the older girl by three years. "He said you were dead," she whispered into her ear. Éponine couldn't help but feel a flash of admiration for her father's cunning. Telling her she was dead would stop any further questions about her whereabouts and provide an excuse for Azelma to do all the work Éponine was responsible for.

"Ah, you're back," the Thenardieress said as if she'd just been away for an errand. She waved a fan back and forth lazily. "Have you brought anything back?"

Éponine thought fast. The only person she was afraid of more than her father was her mother, capable of being both maternal and destructively violent, much like a tigress.

"I have some cheese," Éponine said, digging into the pocket of her dress and drawing out a wedge of Gruyére cheese. She put it on the small round table they used to eat on, as if it would lessen her punishment.

"And you think that's enough, is it?" Enough to make up for _five days' absence?"_ Thenardier grabbed her by the sprained shoulder and flung her against the wall.

Tears of agony sprang to Éponine's eyes but she forced them away.

"This family tries to support three children," Thenardier hissed, momentarily forgetting that they no longer saw Gavroche as their own, since he ran away so long ago. "We have monetary needs. Do you know what happens when you go missing? Azelma has to support us," he growled, accentuating "Azelma" by lifting the younger girl by the hair and shoving her in Éponine's face.

"Don't hurt her!" Éponine shouted desperately as her sister yelped in pain. "It was my fault, don't harm her! She didn't do anything..."

"That's right!" Thenardier crowed, dropping Azelma, who collapsed to the floor, a trembling pile of rags and red hair. "She doesn't do anything! She's a useless piece of _merde_! She couldn't find a sous if it were shoved up her ass!"

Éponine watched her mother give Azelma a hefty kick and order her back to work. Azelma, tears streaming down her face, scrabbled sightlessly for the mop. "She tries so hard for you!" Éponine shrieked, blind with rage and anguish. "Look at her! She's on her hands and knees!"

"She's on her hands and knees like a common, dirty bitch!" Thenardier roared back. Spittle landed on Éponine's forehead. "Who will make up for her incompetence?"

"Me!" Éponine begged, hands now clasped together. "Me! Please!"

Thenardier pulled his arm back and punched her in the face. Éponine's head snapped back and hit the wall, and she tasted blood. "You asked for it," he smiled humourlessly so that it more resembled a grimace. He picked up a clay cup and smashed it on her head. Blood trickled into her eyes, and she closed them. Her legs trembled with the effort of standing up. _Enjolras, where are you?_

As if he had heard her silent cry for help, when Thenardier reached for something else to throw at her, the door broke off its hinges. Four men came barreling in, followed by a smaller, shorter one. Through the stream of crimson she recognised them: Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Grantaire, and Gavroche.

The moment they came in Thenardier banged on the door to another room and three of his gang came out: Claquesous, Montparnasse, and Brujon popped up from what seemed to be nowhere.

"Don't you dare hurt my sister," growled Gavroche, and the two opposing forces fell into each other. Soon, the tiny house was a battlefield. People threw punches, kicks, and basically anything they could find. Madame Thenardier screeched at the loss of their plates and bowls, and Azelma crawled into a corner to avoid getting hit.

Enjolras found Éponine and helped her up, holding her to his chest. She breathed in his scent before opening her eyes and blinking at him to clear the blood. "Azelma," she said, and he nodded. With a gesture to Courfeyrac, the man picked up her sister and brought her to where Enjolras was standing, holding Éponine.

"Get them out of here," he ordered Courfeyrac. "To the Café." Enjolras purposely avoided saying "Musain", should Thenardier or his followers hear them and find them.

"Can you walk?" Courfeyrac asked Azelma, who nodded wordlessly, green eyes wide and glassy. He scooped Éponine up and grabbed Azelma's hand. The three ran out the door, Azelma trailing a little behind, weak from hunger and sleep deprivation.

"They're getting away!" screeched the Thenardieress. Her husband hurried to intercept the escapees, but Enjolras was ready for him and knocked him away from the door with a plank of wood that he swung like a bat.

"Don't even try," he snarled, marble face transformed into that of a fearsome beast.

Some time later Courfeyrac had managed to take Éponine and Azelma back to the Musain, thanks to the two sisters' directions as they ran through narrow alleyways and secret escape routes. Éponine kissed him on the cheek with a tired but genuine smile, relieved that her sister was safe. She was more than sure her brother would take care of himself, so she wasn't too worried.

"Tell the kind man thank you," she instructed Azelma gently.

The frail girl turned her face up at Courfeyrac. "Thank you," she said, and fainted.

Combeferre was next to them in an instant. "Get Éponine somewhere to sit down!" he ordered as he lifted Azelma in his arms. "I'm taking her to Enjolras' room," he explained to Éponine as Courfeyrac filled the others in on what had happened at the Gorbeau.

Combeferre hurried up the stairs as Bossuet pulled up a chair for the elder sister. She thanked him and put her swollen ankle on another chair so she could inspect it. "Where's Joly?" she asked the bald man, who shrugged.

"Left with Musichetta not ten minutes ago. Just before Enjolras came bursting in asking for people who could fight."

"And Courfeyrac and Bahorel volunteered," guessed Éponine with a small smile. It sounded just like them.

"Correct. Grantaire joined them. Not sure whether it was because he was bored or drunk. Gavroche went as well. He follows Courf and Bahorel everywhere, especially if it's to save his sisters." Bossuet wiped sweat from his brow and offered Éponine some wine, which she readily accepted.

"Thank you," she breathed, before draining the entire cup of its contents.

"A girl who can drink," laughed Feuilly, who was watching them. He had just arrived for his lunch break.

"A girl who's very thirsty," Éponine corrected with a grin. "Though she can drink as well."

"Then have another," Courfeyrac invited, pouring her more wine. He poured himself a coup as well, shaking his dark, shaggy head like a dog. Sweat flew in all directions.

"You're revolting," Jehan remarked mildly, flicking a drop from the page in his book.

Éponine smiled fondly at the timid man as he wrinkled his nose in disgust when Courfeyrac purposely shook his head some more, this time in Jehan's face.

"Stop it," he said crossly, using the book to lightly hit the man.

Courfeyrac laughed boisterously and sat back in his seat. Éponine giggled along with him and sipped at her wine. "I wonder how Enjolras and the others are doing, beating up my father and his gang," she said absentmindedly.

To her surprise she found she didn't care all that much that her family was being attacked, now that Azelma was safe with her and being taken care of by Combeferre. She trusted the Amis with her life. What spoke greater volumes was that she trusted them with Azelma's life, too.

"Don't tell me you're worried for him," Combeferre snorted. "He may not look like it, but he's a better fighter than the most of us combined."

Enjolras, thought Éponine, was not built like a fighter like Bahorel was. He was elegant and graceful, more like a cat than a bear. She had seen him hold Thenardier by his throat to the wall, however, with ease. Her father wasn't the heaviest person, but he wasn't exactly light either. It had to take no small amount of strength to lift him by the neck.

"I believe it," Éponine said with a shrug.

"She can't help but worry for him," Jehan said, and everybody turned to look at him. "She loves him."

Éponine spluttered. "I do not," she protested vehemently. And she didn't. She'd just gotten over Marius, and she wasn't about to make a second mistake. Though if she were in love, she supposed Enjolras wouldn't be a bad choice.

"I thought you liked Marius," Courfeyrac said, head swinging towards hers.

"I might've," Éponine admitted. Once she knew she wasn't in love with him, it was much easier for her to discuss it with others. "But not anymore."

"How do you fall out of love with somebody?" asked Bossuet, who had always loved Musichetta.

"Quite easily, I'd wager. Jehan does it all the time." At this, the hopeless romantic gave Feuilly a dirty look, which he returned with a teasing grin.

"I don't think I ever really loved him," Éponine said as she massaged the shoulder Thenardier had re-injured. "I just thought I did."

"But," Jehan interjected, "You know you love Enjolras."

"You wouldn't be the first lady to," Courfeyrac said. "He has many admirers. After all, he isn't bad looking. Don't tell him, though, he'll start hiding from the public so they'll not distract him from his precious revolution. He hides enough from the outside world already."

"Don't be ridiculous," Éponine said, though her heart dropped at Courfeyrac's words, which obviously meant Enjolras didn't have eyes for anybody. "I'm not in love with him. We are just friends."

"Jehan's just being a romantic," Bossuet said assuringly.

"I may be a romantic, but I'm not blind. When Mademoiselle Éponine looks like him it's like she's seeing the face of God." At Jehan's words a red flush came on Éponine's cheeks.

"I know very well he's not _God_," she said, drinking more of her wine to hide her blush. He was just very attractive. What female wouldn't look at him admiringly? "Besides, Courf said he wasn't interested in women, anyway."

"I wouldn't say that," Combeferre, who had come down the stairs. "I'd say he has eyes for one in particular but is too stubborn to admit it."

"Our Enjolras? In love?" Feuilly said incredulously. "Impossible."

"Who is it?" Courfeyrac asked, eyes darting towards Éponine. She didn't notice.

He shook his head. "I wouldn't tell his secrets without his permission. And he won't even admit it to himself; how will he admit it to someone else?"

The room was silent as everybody pondered which girl might their solitary leader be in love with.

"Éponine," Combeferre said after the momentary lull in the conversation. "While Joly is gone I'll do what I can with your wounds. Come upstairs to Enjolras' room. It's practically an infirmary now anyway."

The men chuckled and Éponine smiled as she took Combeferre's proffered arm and allowed him to lead her upstairs.

She could get used to this kind of life.

* * *

The fight had lasted longer than Enjolras had anticipated, but the Amis had the element of surprise. They quickly lost the disadvantage in numbers after Enjolras hit Thenardier and knocked him unconscious. It was also thanks to Bahorel, who had charged Brujon head-on and bashed his face in with a well-aimed stool. To everybody's surprise, the Thenardieress also leapt in the fray, and she was a ferocious enemy in combat. It had taken both Bahorel and Grantaire to bring her down. Gavroche, though small, was fleet and agile on his feet. He wove around attacks and dodged everything Claquesous threw at him, dealing his own quick punches.

Enjolras left to face Montparnasse. They each had a personal grudge against each other: Enjolras hated Montparnasse for nearly slitting Éponine's throat, and Montparnasse hated Enjolras for stopping him and then shooting him in the arm.

"You think you can play the knight in shining armour and claim her as your own?" Montparnasse spat, swinging at the side of Enjolras' head. "She's mine!"

Enjolras blocked it deftly and stepped in to knee him in the stomach. He noticed Montparnasse's arm was bound where he had shot him. "She's neither mine nor yours," he responded calmly. "She's not property. We are all equal in the eyes of God."

"Spoken like a true democrat," Montparnasse sneered, leaping back and successfully avoiding the attack.

"It's only fair," shrugged Enjolras, sidestepping a kick. "Equality is a right everybody deserves."

"Life isn't fair," the other man replied hotly. "You may be an idol among your followers but in my world I am also a hero. I take from you rich bastards and give to the deserving poor!"

"I completely agree," said Enjolras to a startled Montparnasse. "That the poor deserve as much money as I, and I admit that I have much. However, stealing and murder is not the right way about it." He held Montparnasse's arm in a vice-like grip and twisted it behind his back before securing his own arm around his neck.

"And- and a revolution is the right way?" Montparnasse coughed. "I know you are staging a rebellion tomorrow at the funeral. How many people will die there, for you? For fighting against you?" He gave up trying to dislodge Enjolras' arm and instead ran backwards, driving him into the wall.

Enjolras winced not from the impact, but from the words. "I do not enjoy death, but I utilise it for the greater good." He flipped them around and slammed Montparnasse face-first into the wall.

"As do I," grunted the other man, disoriented. His nose had broken with a loud crack, and blood dripped onto the floor.

"Then we have an understanding," Enjolras said cooly, picking up a nearby bottle and breaking it over Montparnasse's head. He slumped to the ground unconscious.

"Only you would have a chat with the man before taking care of him," Grantaire said from behind him. "Why not just knock him out?"

Enjolras turned, and saw Grantaire, Bahorel, and Gavroche standing over their respective opponents all unconscious on the ground. Gavroche was looking remarkably proud of himself, a bruise forming under his eye. He was probably the only twelve-year-old Enjolras knew who could take down a full grown man with little to no help (even if he didn't know many children).

"I like to hear the reactions to our work," Enjolras said as he wiped his hands on his pants.

"If you're quite done, I'd like to go see my sisters," drawled Gavroche, raising one eyebrow.

Enjolras cocked an eyebrow as well. _I do, too,_ he said to himself. "Very good, Master Gavroche," he said, and stepped away from the limp form of Montparnasse.

Bahorel stage-whispered to Grantaire, "Did he just make a joke?"

Enjolras ignored their sniggers and lead the way out. "We're going back to the Musain."

* * *

**AN: Thanks for all the reviews, readers! I really appreciate them. Love y'all!**


	9. The Day Before the Storm

**PART III: REVOLUTION**

**Chapter Seven - The Day Before the Storm**

**DramaRose13:** Oh my Rowling. Do you ship them too? GAH! I LOVE YOU! They won't interact at the Musain much, but... well, I won't give anything away :)  
**Vermillion Focus:** Agreed on that point. You're welcome; thanks for reading :)

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

That night, Éponine was officially invited to that night's Amis meeting. "Because it'll probably be the lsat one," Grantaire said with a dry grin. He had been sober, and Éponine had been by his seriousness and awareness of the world around them. She had the feeling this was why he drank so much: he was so perceptive that he carried the burden of knowing how cruel the world really was.

She'd only ever lurked in the back of the room, eyes embarrassingly fixated on Marius. She wasn't proud of it, but she'd never actually listened to what the Amis were saying during the past meetings. She'd certainly never been invited.

Éponine had never seen so many people in the back room at once. The Amis usually came and went, dropping in from time to time to have a drink or talk with friends. Enjolras was the only constant resident of the Musain. Now, though, every member Les Amis de Café l'ABC were seated at the table in the corner, which was also the largest one, and the one that Enjolras normally did his work at. The meeting had yet to commence, but everybody, even Marius, had taken their seats and were speaking to one another, laughing and drinking. Grantaire winked at her and took his seat next to Gavroche, an honorary member.

The room was filled with a different atmosphere altogether. Though it still had the amiable feeling of companionship, the scene of wine and bread, and the dim lighting of the lamps on the wall, there was a certain buzz of restlessness among the people. An electric thrill ran through the room: the feeling of a pressured piece of glass, or a dam about to break. The Amis, Éponine realised, were anxious for the revolution to begin. The thought filled her with fear and excitement.

"Éponine! It's good to see you're well," Marius greeted her.

She glanced in his direction. Not even the slight fluttering of the stomach. "Nice to see you, Monseiur," she returned with a polite smile. "I still have my broken wrist, but even that feels much better."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Enjolras watching them carefully, and she shot him a friendly smile. He seemed to consider something before giving her a tiny, barely visible smile in return, a quirking of the mouth. Her stomach became a flurry of beating wings and she dreaded what her reaction would be if he gave her a full smile.

"Come sit with us, Ponine!" Gavroche cried from his seat, squashed between Courfeyrac and Grantaire.

"I'm not sure I should," Éponine replied, hovering at the table next to it, not wanting to intrude upon the circle of brothers and their gathering.

"You might as well," said Courfeyrac. "You've been living here for the past five days."

Éponine fought a blush at the round of laughter and hesitantly sat next to Joly, who gave her a reassuring pat. Grantaire, sitting on her other side, smiled at her and passed her a cup of wine.

"Gents," said Enjolras loudly, standing up. Everybody quieted and turned their faces to his commanding presence. "There is one more day before the storm; the time has finally come. It's time to show France what _liberté, égalité, _and _fraternité_ means!"

Éponine watched him speak and was entranced. In the candlelight he blazed with an intensity she had seen in no other. Enjolras was a brilliant speaker; his words flowed effortlessly; his expressions contrasted perfectly with each other and added to the performance. The gestures he made had just the right amount of exaggeration and subtlety. Éponine felt as if she were witnessing a natural phenomenon.

"Amazing, isn't he?" She looked to the right and saw Grantaire nodding towards Enjolras, eyes full of veneration. "Everybody's enraptured."

"He's... he's like nothing I've ever seen before," said Éponine honestly.

Grantaire gave her a little grin. "You should see him preach about infidelity to the cause," he said.

Éponine could imagine it, looking up at the impassioned man and seeing his blue eyes flare with the light of hope and confidence. It was the light of revolution, and they were holding it in their palms, blowing gently at it and wishing with all their had that it wouldn't go out.

* * *

Later that night Enjolras was once again alone with Combeferre. The other Amis had left to go home, and Éponine and Azelma were sleeping in Enjolras' room upstairs.

Combeferre watched Enjolras scan his papers with a forehead wrinkled in concentration and anxiety. Knowing his friend, he was making sure there was not a single detail out of order.

"Enjolras."

The man glanced up at his name. "Oh, you're still here? It's late; you should start heading home."

"I just have a question."

Enjolras had gone back to staring at the pages in his hand. He waved for Combeferre to go on without looking up.

"I want to hear the truth."

"You'll get nothing but," Enjolras reassured, flicking through another pile.

"What is Éponine to you?"

Enjolras froze. He had decided it was better to go through this rebellion with Éponine instead of trying to avoid her, because it was just too difficult. He felt himself drawn to her, and sometimes when she was in the room he would gravitate towards her, and he had to stop himself before anyone else noticed. He had been pretty sure Combeferre noticed, but now he knew for sure.

"She'd a friend to me, and a good companion," Enjolras said, not wanting to lie to Combeferre but also not wanting to say something he would regret.

"You promised nothing but the truth," Combeferre pressed on, eyes fixed intently on Enjolras' still form.

"I may," began Enjolras, choosing his words carefully, "have developed a soft spot for her."

"And you're afraid this "soft spot" will be a distraction from the task at hand?" Combeferre inquired, gesturing to the pages and pages of arduous planning.

"No," said Enjolras, shaking his head. Now that he had admitted to having a "soft spot" he found himself willing to tell Combeferre about his peculiar relationship with Éponine. "I used to, but now I've decided it's even more distracting to keep myself away from her."

"And you're still sure there's nothing between you two?" Combeferre was doubtful. It seemed there _was_.

Enjolras gave Combeferre a calculating look. "Can I trust you not to say a word?"

Combeferre returned the look. "I'm insulted you'd even think I would."

"Then you can tell me whether there is something yourself," Enjolras said, and told him _everything_.

"It sounds," Combeferre said slowly after he had finished, "like you're in love with her."

Enjolras scoffed. "Don't be daft. When have I ever been in love? My only mistress is Patria."

"You told me to tell you what I thought," Combeferre shrugged. "That's what I think." He peered into his wine cup and saw that there was only a little left.

"I respect your opinion, Ferre, but you can be sure I am not in love with Éponine." Enjolras' tone clearly said there was nothing more to discuss about the matter.

Combeferre shrugged again, finishing his wife and wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Then that's that, I suppose," he said, letting it go.

But he knew better.

* * *

The Amis grouped together in the same room the next morning, full of excitement. Grantaire was looking especially drunk, and Gavroche was performing an improvised ditty to his amused audience. Enjolras was the only person with a frown on his face, flipping through pages of sketches and notes with an expression of deep concentration. He ran both hands through his hair over and over so that the blonde curls stuck up in the air. His teeth dug deep into his lower lip.

Éponine couldn't help but watch him, smiling slightly at his obvious anxiousness. She laid a hand on his shoulder and he jolted before looking up at her with large blue eyes.

She snorted in a very unladylike way. "Someone looks stressed. Are you okay?"

"Great. Why wouldn't I be great? It's great." Enjolras turned back to his notes, raking his fingers through his hair.

Éponine raised her eyebrows. She hadn't expected him, always so calm and composed, to be so nervous just hours before the funeral. "You're clearly not. Do you need something to drink?" She reached for a bottle of wine, but his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Her skin burned under his cool fingers.

"Are you insane? I can't _drink_, especially now. This is when it all starts. We have to get it _right_. This isn't a rally, it isn't a riot, it's a full-blown rebellion. This is _war._ We need to make it right, if I drink I can't-"

"_Enjolras_," she said, and he shut up. "Calm down_._ Having a fit isn't going to help you pull this off either."

He stared at her for a moment longer before taking a deep breath, nodding, cheeks colouring slightly. "Right. Yes. You're right." He set his papers down and held onto the table for dear life as he took a couple more calming breaths.

Éponine watched him until he looked up at her again. "You've worked so hard for this," she said. "You have worked out every possible outcome, you've calculated every possible route. You have nothing to fear."

He gazed at her before biting his lip again and letting go. "Of course. Nothing to fear," he echoed. He stopped gripping the table, but she could see his hands trembling.

She reached out and took his hand in hers, keeping it from shaking. "You're our leader, Enjolras. You're going to be at the head of our army, leading the charge, and you're going to be amazing."

Éponine grinned encouragingly at him, and his eyes held hers with an expression akin to wonder. She found she couldn't look away, caught in the blue depths.

And then he gave her a smile, where his lips curved crookedly and the corners of his eyes crinkled. His perfect white teeth peeked out from behind his lips as dimple formed around his mouth. She hadn't thought it was possible for him to look more handsome, but there he was, looking fucking _glorious_. Éponine's knees wobbled as she felt her belly do somersaults and she had to hold onto a chair to keep herself from sinking to the floor.

* * *

He approached her sometime around lunch, when it was just the two of them sitting around eating, Éponine occasionally going up to check on Azelma. Their other friends had left for a group lunch, and they'd been the only ones to decline (Enjolras insisted he wanted to go over the plans some more, and Éponine wanted to stay with Azelma).

"May I ask you a bit of a personal question?"

Éponine looked up, surprised, but smiled and nodded. "Of course. God knows I owe you, anyway."

"You don't owe me," Enjolras replied reflexively with his own tiny smile, "but I'll ask it anyway. What exactly did you do for your father?"

Éponine's face darkened, and she suddenly looked twenty years older. Enjolras immediately regretted approaching her at all, and opened his mouth to apologise, but she was already answering.

"Many things. Mostly helped out with minor gang robberies, if you're talking about jobs for my father in particular. In general though, besides the regular chores, Azelma and I made pretty good thieves and pickpockets. Sometimes we were sent to play up the "poor, starving, sick daughters" act to garner some pity change. The bourgeois think a bit of charity will clear their record of stepping all over us on a regular basis." Éponine scoffed in disgust. "Sometimes I was sent to the docks." Enjolras almost shuddered at the thought of her selling her body for several francs. "My father didn't trust us with the harder jobs. He didn't think we would be able to handle it."

"What kind of harder jobs?" Enjolras inquired, curiosity getting the better of him.

Éponine met his gaze with a bitter smile. Enjolras felt chills at the hollowness of her eyes. "Oh, you know. Torture. Murder. The men were rapists when they were in the mood, too."

Enjolras felt himself stiffen. "You shouldn't have had to live with people like that."

"Oh, I'm one of the many," Éponine smiled, a little condescendingly. "I'm lucky. I only spent three months in prison. I know a kid in my neighbourhood who spent three years and came back funny. Wouldn't leave his room or talk to anybody except himself. He died a few months ago. Sixteen."

Enjolras had to turn away from her so she wouldn't see the rage in his face. He wasn't one that desired death, but he had never wanted to kill anybody more in his life. He wanted to find whoever did this to these children and _make them suffer_.

* * *

When he wasn't brooding or giving speeches or scolding Grantaire, he had taken to smiling. Enjolras didn't know what to think of that, except that it felt good. He wasn't sure why he didn't do it more often. In fact, when Éponine smiled her beautiful smile at him (but virtually everything she did was beautiful, so Enjolras really shouldn't have been surprised), it felt only natural to smile back.

He really didn't mind having her around. But he wasn't about to let her go to the funeral with them.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked when he saw her standing up to go with the boys. Everybody turned as one to stare at her.

She looked around and straightened confidently. "I am going to stage a rebellion." Enjolras almost dropped the red flag he was holding.

"No," he and Joly said at the same time.

"No, you're not," Enjolras shook his head emphatically. His heart sped up. He wasn't about to let her get hurt a fourth time. He would lose his mind and he needed to be calm for the most important event in Les Amis history.

"Not with your ankle, wrist, and shoulder," Joly added.

Éponine looked affronted, and her dark eyes hardened. "I can handle myself perfectly, thanks for your concern," she spat.

"That doesn't mean you won't get hurt again," Enjolras pointed out. "Which is much more likely with your current injuries."

"Why are you going, then?" Éponine countered, pointing at the cut on Grantaire's forehead and Gavroche's black eye. "You were just off beating up the Patron Minette!"

"None of us broke a wrist or sprained anything," Enjolras said. _Please just make this easy on us_, he pleaded silently. He was having a hard enough time saying no to her.

"Azelma's not as badly injured as you and she's not going," said Joly, who Éponine glared at, expression betrayed.

"That's cos she's not an Amis!"

"The more important part is that she's not being an idiot and risking getting even more hurt than she already is," Enjolras snipped.

"You're taking a twelve year old with you!" Éponine finally cried, throwing her arms in the air.

The Amis looked at each other and then down at the smirking gamin.

"That twelve year old knocked out Claquesous," Courfeyrac said. "And he's more stubborn than you are."

Éponine stared at them all in disbelief. "Are _all _of you against me on this?"

"Absolutely," said Enjolras firmly. "Let's go. We have a funeral to attend." He flung open the door and marched out before he could run back and beg for forgiveness at the feet of the outraged gamine.

* * *

She was going whether they allowed it or not. She was Éponine Thenardier and disobeying the rules was in her blood. _So is thievery_, she thought to herself as she slipped a hand into Enjolras' drawer and took out a white shirt.

She saw Azelma looking at her curiously. "Don't you say a word," she warned her sister, who shrugged and lay back on the bed.

"I've never told anyone your secrets before. Why would I start now?" Azelma replied, crossing her arms.

"You're right," said Éponine, slipping her dress over her head with her healthy arm. "You wouldn't."

Ten minutes later she was dressed in part-bourgeois, part-gamin clothing: Enjolras' shirt, Courfeyrac's vest, Jehan's pants, and Gavroche's boots. She tied her hair in a bun and put her brother's hat over it. To finish the look she found a rag on the counter of the Musain and wrapped it around her neck, so that it looked like a loose-fitting tie.

"That's not bad," Azelma praised her. "Have you been taking lessons from 'Parnasse?"

The murder/thief/fraud was also a master of disguise. "No," answered Éponine with a smirk. "I'm just a natural." She gave her sister a salute as she left the room. "Wish my luck!"

"You'll need it!"

* * *

**AN: Did you catch the Next To Normal reference? Also, d****o you guys like Azelma? I find myself liking her a lot. I've got an idea what her personality will be like, which you'll see more of later.**


	10. The Barricade

**Chapter Eight - The Barricade**

**Smiles1998:** Dude, you review _all the time_. I love you so much. And yes, it's going to kind of go to shit.  
**idreamadreamtoo:** Thank you! I think because he's so protective of his friends and his country, he'd be even more protective of someone he cared a lot about, like Éponine. And I made all the Thenardier children have a certain attitude... you know, the "I don't take no bullshit" kind of attitude.  
**DramaRose13:** Thank you so much! Literally, Jehelma is so cute because they are like complete opposites and yet they work so well together GAH FEELS

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

A boy he didn't recognise slipped into the ranks of the Amis next to Gavroche. His head was bent and Enjolras couldn't see his face, though the vest he was wearing did spark something in his memory.

He was about to turn to Combeferre and ask whether he knew him or not, but he didn't have time. The marching drummers were approaching, followed by a line of the national guard on horses. Behind was the funerary carriage, which was in front of another, much larger group of guards. It was time.

Enjolras, his eyes fixed firmly on the carriage, gave the signal to the Amis on the both sides of the procession. Bahorel, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire ran forward and formed a line in front of the horses, and they whinnied in fear, rearing on their hind legs. The guards on them were forced to swerve to the side and lead them away from carriage. The other Amis quickly latched onto the carriage itself. The procession halted completely, but the Amis were still moving, advancing inwards.

Meanwhile, Enjolras drew the banner out of his bag, swiftly tying it onto a wooden rod. He tossed the bag onto the ground and hoisted the flag high in the air, rushing forward with a cry of "Vive la France!" He climbed to the top of the carriage, and looked down at the crowds. "We have been repressed for long enough!" he roared. "This is a message to the king! Let all know: _we will not be slaves_ _again!_ Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and fight with us?"

The crowd bellowed in reply, mixtures of "Vive la republiqué!" and "Death to the king!" ringing in the air. Someone tapped his foot and and he looked down. Marius was gazing up at him. They stared each other, and then Enjolras forgave Marius. It is hard to be angry with a man who has made the decision to give their life to your cause. He extended a hand, and Enjolras grasped it, pulling him up onto the carriage. He nodded at him, and Marius turned to shout at the crowd.

"Beyond the cruelty and the suppression, is there a world you long to see? Join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!"

Enjolras treated Marius to a rare smile. He was proud of him, for though he would obviously run after his Cosette, he stuck to what he had already committed himself to. Turning back to the turbulent mob, he waved his flag in the air. "Will you give all you can give so that out banner may advance? Will you stand up and take your chance?"

The crowd, as the Amis had hoped, were caught up in the adrenaline rush of it all. The Amis had lit the flame; now the angry mob fueled it. They swarmed around the carriage, around the horses, around the marching band. Enjolras felt hope lift his spirits. It was working.

His speech ended and as the people below them cheered and hollered, he glanced down. The mysterious boy from before was there, holding onto the carraige. The shirt he was wearing had a brown stain on it.

It struck him. That was _his_ shirt, the one Grantaire had spilled coffee on and Enjolras rarely wore again. The boy looked up, and Enjolras froze. The boy was not a boy at all. It was Éponine.

He had been distracted, and the guard took advantage. A shot rang out. It seemed as if the crowd dented. One person fell and the people surrounding the fallen stumbled back, some crouching to aid whoever it had been.

Enjolras looked, fear slicing him like a knife at the thought of an Amis being shot. Then he saw the Madame Hucheloup, the wife of the late owner of a wine shop Grantaire had discovered, one he was quite fond of. It was called the _Pot aux Roses_. She was a large, bearded woman with a penchant for pouring too much wine in their cups.

She had been pierced in the stomach with a bullet.

Combeferre and Feuilly, closest to her, turned and shouted at the guard who had done it.

"She's an innocent woman!" Combeferre howled. "Murderer!"

Feuilly was shouting obscenities, shaking his fist. The common-people around him were behaving similarly, rallying against the government.

A second shot was fired, and then a third. A bullet whizzed by Enjolras' head just as the shoulder who had hit Madame Hucheloup fell down, dead. Bahorel had fired the shot. Enjolras looked in the direction of the bullet that had been aimed at him: it was a member of the cavalry. In one fluid moment, Enjolras pulled out the pistol at his hip, aimed, and fired at the galloping man. It hit him in the chest and he fell off his horse.

"Good shot," Marius murmured to him out of the corner of his mouth as he, too, took out his pistol.

Enjolras spotted a guard just below the carriage, aiming a pistol point-blank at Éponine. With an unloaded pistol, he found himself weaponless to defend her. Thinking quickly, he used the pole of the flag as a staff, hitting the guard straight in the sternum. The guard fell back and Éponine drew out a knife and slashed at his stomach. He fell, bleeding from two gashes in the abdomen. Enjolras stared at Éponine, wide-eyed, and she shot him a smirk, twirling the dagger in one hand. He leapt off the carriage and began reloading his pistol.

"Knowing 'Parnasse had its uses," Éponine explained as the crown around them pushed outward and into the firing guards and horsemen. "I'm rather good with a knife."

It was hard to fight with the flag in one hand, but he soon discovered that the red of the banner could momentarily confuse the enemy while Enjolras used it as a quarterstaff to stun or even kill guards. A man beside him fell, dead, as a bayonet was driven into his heart. It was the sous-chef of the Musain. Enjolras clenched his jaw in bitter fury and shot the guard who had done it in the forehead, kicking him down as the blood splattered in his face.

He looked around him. The mob were filled with passion and desperation, which made them dangerous. But the guards were trained soldiers, and they responded to the frenzy with order and calm. The dead littering the ground were mostly that of the common folk. Enjolras realised they would not last long if they continued.

He made a split-second decision. "To the barricade!" he roared, and it sent a cheer among the Amis. Marius rode by on a horse he had taken from a national guard and Enjolras passed the flag to him. "The Poteau," he told him, using the abbreviation of the wine shop.

Marius nodded and rode ahead, raising the banner above his head. "To the barricade! Vive la France!"

It had been Grantaire's idea to have the barricade at the Poteau, and in the spur of the moment Enjolras decided to humour him. Enjolras lead the other Amis and about forty other people, partly from the crowd and partly from the school most of the Amis went to, shouting and cheering own the narrow streets of Paris.

_For Patria_, thought Enjolras. _For _liberté, égalité, et fraternité.

* * *

She hoped that perhaps Enjolras would be the only one to see through the disguise, but Gavroche had caught her eye and given her a broad wink, tapping his head to show her he had recognised his hat. This was before anybody else had even noticed she was there. Sometimes the gamin had a sharper eye than Enjolras or even a sober Grantaire.

When she reached the Poteaux, people were already throwing down chairs and tables out of windows. She jumped to one side as a piano nearly landed on her head. _What a waste,_ she thought before helping Marius and Courfeyrac break down a door and add it to the growing pile.

"Any and all bits and pieces!" Enjolras shouted above the din, rolling over a cart into the barricade with the help of a couple other Amis.

"Look at how it grows!" crowed a gleeful Bahorel, once he and Jehan heaved a bench on top of it the cart.

"Windows," said Gavroche from next to her.

"What?" Éponine glanced down at her younger brother, bewildered.

"We've gotta add windows. If they try to climb the barricade, the glass will break an' cut 'em."

Courfeyrac beamed. "Magnificent idea, little Gavroche!" He, Bossuet, and three other students who had heard the gamin speak bounded off to take down windows. Gavroche glowed with praise and Éponine smiled brightly at her quick-witted brother with pride, and ran to help.

The air was filed with men's voices, loud and ringing in their ears. It mixed with the crashing of furniture and household objects. The horse Marius had been riding galloped away, tossing its head, spooked by the falling objects. Éponine had to dodge it to avoid getting trampled.

She heard Enjolras giving orders in a raised voice: "Marius! Gather some others and take the munitions into the shop! Feuilly! Take an inventory of the food and drink! Gavroche! Find out the results of the rebellion and the current movement of the Paris guards!" The Amis scattered to obey him as Éponine hurried to his side.

"Is there anything I could do?"

Enjolras seemed surprised she was there. He gazed down at her with an unfathomable expression in his ice blue eyes. "Just stay alive."

* * *

He watched the barricade form before his eyes. It was both terrifying and thrilling to see it take shape. As he sent out a person to spy on the enemy, Enjolras hoped with all his might it would withstand the forces of the opposition. He shut his eyes briefly, thinking of the lives he had already taken today, before hardening his resolve once more.

When he opened them again, Éponine was next to him. He glanced down, having forgotten she was there. Enjolras felt a surge of concern for her safety.

"Is there anything I could do?" Her dark eyes shone with the same light he saw in the other men, and he realised he was one of them now; she was their sister in arms, and a daughter of the revolution. This scared him more than anything else, but he willed himself to show nothing of it. As the commander of this revolution, he could not show fear.

"Just stay alive," he managed, holding tighter onto his pistol. He quickly turned away to look up at the barricade. It would have to do, now that it was nearing four o'clock in the afternoon and the troops would be approaching.

"Where's the entrance?" He asked Jehan, pulling him aside.

The poet pointed. "There's an opening by the right wall of the Poteau building. The back door's also still open. Where receiving ammunition from Marius, Jonathan Fabantou, and Don Genflot through that," he said, naming two other law students.

"Good. Everybody in!" Enjolras shouted, and the mixture of students and working men filed into the small gap. Feuilly alone ran out and skidded to a stop in front of Enjorlas and Éponine.

"There's enough bread, cheese, fruit, and meat to last a day or so, judging by the people we have. And there's plenty of wine and brandy in the stores. Don't worry, Grantaire hasn't gotten into it yet," the fan maker added at Enjolras' expression.

"Good. Make sure nobody does," Enjolras paused, and then said, "Actually, you and Éponine can go and hide the wine so that nobody finds it. Keep the brandy available, but don't leave all of it out."

Éponine nodded, feeling herself immediately compelled to obey his brisk, businesslike tone.

"Let's go," said Feuilly to the gamine as he lead the way into the barricade.

Enjolras watched them leave and then directed his eyes down the street, straining to see any guards. There were none. He bit his lip before turning around and making for the entrance of their barricade.

* * *

"There's really no need to keep your identity a secret," Feuilly said conversationally.

Éponine looked up, shocked. "When did you find out?"

"Courf told me during the building of the barricade. He recognised the vest." Feuilly lifted a crate of wine. "Let's put them in Huchloup's bedroom. There's a key in there, I think."

"Everybody knows who I am?" Éponine asked, following him up the stairs.

"Even the other students and the people we met at the funeral today." Feuilly found key beneath the carpet under the bed.

Éponine winced. "Even Joly?"

"He was actually the one that recognised Jehan's pants and told half the Amis in a rant about patients disobeying a doctor's orders." THey went back downstairs to pick up more wine.

She wasn't sure whether to laugh because Jehan didn't even recognise his own (very eccentric) pants or frown because of Joly's obvious annoyance. "I guess I wasn't thinking straight when I chose to wear their clothing. Gavroche and Enjolras noticed in the first ten minutes."

"There's a coffee stain on the shirt that Enjolras particularly remembers. Grantaire spilled it on him and a thousand-word paper."

Éponine smiled at the image of an enraged Enjolras and a raucously laughing Grantaire. "I don't suppose he was very happy about that."

They'd moved on to the brandy in a comfortable silence when they heard a shout from downstairs.

Éponine and Feuilly exchanged alarmed looks before sprinting down to the ground floor.

There, the Amis were gathered in a circle around a middle aged man dressed in street-people clothing. Courfeyrac and Bahorel held him in place, wearing identical furious expressions.

"So don't believe a word he says cos none of it's true," Gavroche was saying from his perch atop a cabinet. "Lady and gents, it just goes to show wot little people can do!" He pounded his chest with tiny fist, smirking proudly.

Éponine recognised the captive man as the informant they'd sent out earlier.

"Well done, little Gavroche," said Courfeyrac with a feral grin. "You're the top of the class. We should shoot this spy _now_!"

"Do it, then," the spy challenged.

Bahorel drew a pistol and dug it into his jaw. "So I will!"

"Stop! Don't waste your bullets," Enjolras said. "You. What's your name."

"Javert," the spy replied.

"He's a police inspector," Gavroche piped up. "High up an' all that."

"Tie him up in the shop basement," Enjolras decided. "We'll figure out what to do with him later."

Courfeyrac and Bahorel did his bidding and dragged Javert into the wine shop. Éponine saw them secure him to the wall with three coils of rope, just to be certain. The spy sat there, looking defiantly up at them with his hands bound uselessly behind him.

"And stay there," spat Bahorel, giving him a kick in the side before marching back outside.

Enjolras ordred Bossuet to guard their prisoner and turned to the assembled insurgents. "Who actually knows when they will attack?"

"I can slip in and out real quiet," said a child's voice. Gavroche had slid down to the ground.

Enjolras looked at him dubiously.

"I can!" insisted the energetic young boy. "I've told you stuff 'bout the battle, 'aven't I?"

He had. He'd told Enjolras the number of casualties from he funeral: 23 out of 33 dead, and 6 wounded.

"Alright. We need the information quick." Enjolras handed the boy a knife, just in case.

Gavroche frowned at the weapon and instead picked up a pistol laying instead. "And if I get back with the information I get a musket," he announced.

A ghost of a smile flitted across Enjolras' face. "Deal."

Satisfied, Gavroche dove through the entrance and disappeared down an alley. "What time is it?" Enjolras asked no-one in particular.

"Nearing six!" somebody in the crowd cried.

Éponine gave a start. Was it really that late already? She looked to the sky. It would be sunset in another hour.

"Everybody, at ease. We still wait for the information. Stay alert, and call for me, Combeferre, or Courfeyrac whenever you see or hear something." Enjolras holstered his pistol and gave them all one sweeping look. "Everybody keep the faith, for certain as our banner flies, we are not alone. The people, too, must rise."

The crowd of forty-three revolutionaries slunk off. Some sat on barrels and boxes, some rested their heads against them, and some lay on the ground, loading and reloading their guns.

Éponine watched on person in particular. Enjolras was sitting next to Combeferre, his eyes half closed, giving an impression of dozing off. However, she saw his eyes flicking about, perfectly alert and seeing everyting at once.

She rose and made her way over to him. She sat cross-legged beside him, and Enjolras losed his eyes. The three remained unspeaking together.

"How is your ankle?" Enjolras after a long silence.

"It doesn't hurt right now," she said, watching his peaceful face. Every exhale blew one straying golden curl into the air.

"When does it?"

"When I strain it. If I run, or if I jump."

"Don't run or jump, then," was Enjolras' instant response.

"I'll try, but we _are_ at a barricade awaiting what could be the entire army of Paris." She saw Combeferre smile at her snarky answer.

"I'm just saying not to strain it. I'm not telling you to hide in a casket the entire time," retorted Enjolras in the exact same tone.

Éponine laughed. "Did you just try to be sardonic?"

One striking blue eye opened. "Did it work?" He gave her a half smile.

She felt her insides turn to mush, but kept a straight face. "I'm impressed. You sounded just like my brother."

Enjolras close his eye again, his half smile still in place. "I'm a man of many talents."

Combeferre grinned. "What's wrong with you? Are you making jokes? Have you learned what sarcasm is?"

"It's all Ponine's fault," Enjolras said, his eyes now open and staring right at her with amusement.

Éponine couldn't help but giggle with pure delight at this new version of Enjolras, and at his endearing nickname for her.

"You've broken him," Combeferre teased. "I don't think he'll ever be the same again."

At this, Enjolras sat up, giving his best friend a warning look, the smile slipping off his face. Combeferre just smiled and shrugged. Éponine watched them curiously, but didn't say a word.

They passed around a small cup of brandy and listened for marching.

* * *

**AN:** Apologies to those that don't like song lyrics in the prose. I also apologise for any OOCness of Enjolras, but I like to think Éponine's changed him :)


	11. Night of Anguish

**Chapter Nine - Night of Anguish**

**DramaRose13:** Ahh I was too! I was so terrified writing this and also laughing my ass off because you guys are going to be as scared as I was.  
**Smiles1998:** I replied to you through PM, in case you hadn't read it yet :)

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

It happened right as the sun began to set.

"Do you hear that?" Enjolras was up within the blink of an eye, hand on his carbine.

"Hear what?" Éponine and Combeferre stood up as well.

"I think it's marching."

Just then, the voice of a child rang out, singing loudly and happily:

"My nose is in tears,  
My good friend Bugeaud*,  
Just lend me your spears,  
To tell them my woe.  
In blue cassimere**,  
Hen on the shako,  
The banlieue is here!  
Co-co-corico!"

It was Gavroche, singing the old folk tune "Au Clair de la Lune".

Combeferre's hand shot out and grabbed Enjolras' forearm. They looked at each other, eyes bright, both knowing what this meant.

"He's warning us," Combeferre said, thinking over the words of the song.

"Gavroche," Éponine breathed, not hearing the two men, running to the opening to see her brother break into a sprint, pelting down the street.

"They're here! They're coming! Give me my musket!" Gavroche cried, climbing nimbly over a bus and under a couch to slide into the barricade.

The barricade exploded into action. Suddenly people were clapping each other on the back, drawing out guns and loading extra ones. They exchanged words of encouragement and banter, smiles lighting up their faces in a savage delight. The men who didn't have their muskets approached the rack of weaponry. Éponine, heart thumping in her chest, grabbed a few and tossed them to them.

She reached for one as well, but a voice stopped her.

"No," the voice ordered. Her hand froze and she glared at Enjolras. Hadn't he learned by now that he couldn't stop her from being in the barricade?

"What do you mean, "no"? I can fight-"_  
_

"We need you reloading the muskets and issuing fresh munitions to the others when they have need of it," he said, holstering a second pistol onto his belt.

Éponine frowned, but let her arm fall to her side. "Fine," she muttered, unhappy but obliging.

"Thank you," said Enjolras sincerely, and he pushed his way through the crowd, Éponine following close behind.

Everybody took a post. Combeferre, Enjolras, Bahorel, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Gavroche, and Courfeyrac formed a line at the very front, with Enjolras in the middle. Éponine crouched behind Enjolras and Courfeyrac so she could receive their muskets or carbines after they fired them.

They could see the guards now. As they rounded the corner, more and more came into view. The sound of marching resounded across the street to the barricade, and it was deafening. There were so many men that they did not all fit into the narrow road, and the troops stretched on and on, seeming to go on forever. She heard Bossuet let out a shaky breath.

"Hold your fire," commanded Enjolras, quiet but clearly audible.

Éponine looked up at the man of marble and recalled the myths regarding the invulnerable Greek gods. Except, she knew, however strong he seemed, he was still agonisingly mortal. She was struck with deep desperation, one that shook her to the core. There was going to be a battle, and some would fall. And she didn't want him to fall. She _couldn't_ let him fall. She reached out a trembling hand and lightly touched his shoulder.

His golden head swiveled around and light blue met dark amber.

* * *

He felt her palm on his shoulder and his immediate reaction was to yell and shake her off, then demand her to lock herself up in a closet somewhere in the shop and not come out until it was safe outside. Instead he turned his face around and looked down at her.

"Please don't die," Éponine said in a small voice. He was struck by the fear in her eyes, and realised that it was fear for _him_. That hit him with overwhelming force. There was the rushing sensation again, and he felt himself plummet further into the abyss. He was so far down now that he knew there was no going back.

Her olive skin shone a gorgeous honey, lit up by the moonlight. Her warm honey-amber eyes sent waves of intoxicating vigour through him, pricking at the back of his neck and sending shivers down his spine. She was the most beautiful in the lunar light, he decided. Éponine was a creature of the night, blending in effortlessly with the shadows, and yet she emanated an unearthly glow when she finally stepped into the radiance of the light. She was the most perfectly flawed, magnificent thing he'd ever seen.

He thought maybe he was a little bit in love with her, after all.

"Do you remember what you said? About living for somebody?" Enjolras said this in a low voice, speaking quickly.

She paused, thinking, and then nodded fervently, big eyes widening slightly. The hat she wore bobbed up and down on the bun of dark hair. He ached to reach out and fix it just to have an excuse to touch her.

"I will live for you, as long as you stay alive for me." With these words he turned back around and watched the rows and rows of men outside the barricade. He had, as cryptically as possible, told her he loved her. If he was going to die on this pile of furniture, then he might as well say it.

"Who goes there?" A man within the lines of soldiers called.

Enjolras didn't take his eyes from the gap in the barricade. He gripped his carbine tighter and his knuckles turned white as bone. "The French Revolution!" he shouted back.

The world stood silent and still, and then: "Fire!"

Enjolras bit down hard on his lip as the bullets fired into the wall of piled furniture. _For Patria_, he thought. _And for Éponine_.

* * *

Éponine had stopped moving. She didn't even know if she was breathing. Courfeyrac had to pull her down as the other side fired into their barricade.

"Hold your fire!" Combeferre was yelling as the shards of wood and various building materials rained down on them.

She didn't notice any of it, because she was pretty sure Enjolras had, in his own fashion, told her he loved her in a way that only the two of them would understand.

_If I loved someone, and if they were the most important thing to me, I would live for them, too._ She remembered her own words as sharp as steel. And he had told her, freezing her in place with intense blue eyes, that he would live for her, as long as she lived for him.

_As long as she lived for him_. Éponine felt as if she had awakened from a deep slumber. She was quite sure she could do that, especially if he had promised to try and survive. She hardened with a new resolve to fight for her life, and for Enjolras', and even for the entire barricade's.

Suddenly she heard Gavroche cry, "Watch out!"

Four tall, broad men, belonging (judging by their uniforms) to the Municipal Guard, had sneaked to the entrance of the barricade. As Gavroche alerted them of their presence (she mentally thanked all the deities for bestowing at least one of them with observance), they sprang in through the opening. In the back of Éponine's mind she marveled at how such large men could possibly fit through such a small space.

Bahorel was the first to react. "Vive la Revolution!" he cried, and vaulted forward, firing his musket right into the throat of the first guard.

Things seemed to go in slow motion. Éponine's breath stuck as she watched the second guard in terror. He stepped forward without even blinking and drove the end of his bayonet straight into Bahorel's chest.

She shrieked wordlessly in a mixture of rage and despair.

Enjolras was there in a second, and he had stabbed the guard with his own bayonet. "Éponine! he shouted, turning to her. His eyes commanded her to be calm. "Reload Bahorel's musket. Can you do that? Reload his musket, _now_!"

She breathed in deeply through her nose several times to pull herself together. "Yes, yes," she chanted as she picked up the musket and went through the motions of reloading it.

As she did this Éponine watched Courfeyrac get knocked down by a third Municipal guard, and the last guard advanced upon Gavroche, who held Javert's musket in his tiny arms. It was almost as big as he was, but the boy aimed it at the mammoth guard with a taunting expression.

Her brother was one of those people that surpassed the definition of courage. He reached the point known as fearlessness, which is the opposite of bravery. Courage is to face fear and overcome it, but fearlessness is to have no fear at all and charge onwards with something close to stupidity. That was what Gavroche was: so without a trace of fear he was almost foolish.

And when he fired the musket and realised it had not been loaded, the colossal guard laughed in his face. Gavroche just shrugged and gave him a cheeky grin as the bayonet was raised over his head.

Éponine would have none of it. She dropped the musket in her hands, and reached for the dagger in her boots. Her eyes fierce and blazing in protective fury, she bent back her arm and snapped it back forward with a decisive flick of the wrist. The blade was released in a flight of deadly accuracy. It thudded into the guard's left breast and he dropped the musket holding into Gavroche's waiting hands.

At the same time, just a few paces away from Éponine, Marius was just as intent on saving his housemate. He drew one of his twin pistols, squinted, pursed his lips, and fired. The bullet entered the guard's temple and he released Courfeyrac, who fell to the ground in relief with a grateful glance at Marius.

Éponine and Marius turned to look at each other with matching expressions of admiration. "Impressive," they said at the same time, and shared a grin full of camaraderie.

"Thankee kindly, 'Ponine!" Gavroche called cheerfully as he placed the fallen guards' muskets onto the rack.

"No problem," she replied, finishing unloading Bahorel's musket just as she heard a shout from beyond the barricade.

"Fire!"

The other side released another volley into the barricade. Parts of it splintered and broke. The revolutionaries were caught unawares but swiftly returned fire.

"Wait! Don't waste the ammunition!" Enjolras hollered, as Éponine threw fresh muskets at the men. Combeferre and Joly joined her in reloading the multitude of discharged carbines, muskets, and pistols, looting the useful belongings of the dead Municipal guards. Bossuet and another couple students dragged the bodies of the guards away, and put Bahorel separate from them, so he wouldn't have to be near his enemies even in death.

The soldiers still on the other side reassembled themselves. A man in the front called out to them. "Surrender!"

Éponine saw Enjolras quirk his lip in a wry smile.

* * *

"Surrender!"

Enjolras could have laughed. Did they really think they would surrender now? They had already lost Bahorel (who, though he was a massive pain in the arse, was still a close and dear friend he would miss terribly) and at least three other students. They'd gotten themselves in and now they would fight their way out, taking as many with them.

No, they weren't about to stop now. They had just gotten started.

"Fire!" Enjolras shouted, and the insurgents did.

The sound was like a thunderclap, right next to their ears, and the smoke filled their lungs.

When the smoke cleared Enjolras saw a figure on top of the barricade, holding a torch in the air.

"Get back, or I'll blow the barricade!" bellowed a voice. It was Marius, and the flame of the torch he was holding was flickering dangerously near a powder keg. There was a moment of stunned silence.

"Blow it up!" came the answering call. "And yourself with it!"

Marius lowered the torch even closer to the keg. Several people screwed up their faces in anticipation.

"Marius!" Enjolras barked warningly.

"And myself with it," Marius said solemnly.

Now many of the revolutionaries were calling his name, calling for him to get away from the keg.

"Pontmercy, don't be stupid!" Enjolras shouted, but there was no need. The guards had retreated back up the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the street on the end of which the Poteaux was situated, and into the night. The barricade was safe.

* * *

He raised his head, groggy. Where were the others? Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac? They were nowhere to be seen. As he blinked several times, his eyes adjusted to the dark. He was in a basement of some sort. He remembered being grabbed around the waist and being hit in the head with the butt of a pistol, but that was it.

He supposed he must have been taken captive by the guards. He was pondering this unfortunate turn of events when a door creaked open and a figure filled the doorway, blocking the light that spilled in.

He pressed the back of his hand over his eyes to shield himself from the sudden brightness, but the illuminance was short lived, because the door closed quickly and the figure scampered to his side. It lit a candle and irradiated the room with a dim light.

He could see a face now. It had delicate features, with a long, thin nose, soft lips, and mildly freckled cheeks. He saw bright green eyes, shaped like a cat's, and tendrils of ginger hair that curled out from underneath the hood.

He was confused for a second before that the stranger was a girl, and that he knew who the stranger was. He opened his mouth to say her name, but a pale, spindly hand was quickly placed over his mouth. When she removed it he immediately began to ask her questions in an incredulous whisper. "What are you doing here? Where are we? What's going on?"

"Shh," she shushed him, glancing at the door. "I'll answer those questions when we get out, if you haven't figured them out by then already."

"How did you even get here?" he hissed, still in a state of shock.

"Not all that hard, but I'll tell you later," she replied. "Now listen. We don't have much time before they come back, so you'll have to pay attention because I'm not going to repeat myself."

He nodded and she began to speak quickly in hushed tones. "Here's what we're going to do."

* * *

They took a count of the insurgents left standing. The Amis sat in the lower floor, except for Marius, who was keeping watch upstairs with the other revolutionaries.

"Jehan is missing," Joly said, after he made sure of it two more times.

"They must have taken him prisoner," Éponine guessed, face white. The others looked upset as well; Jehan was easily the most liked out of everybody since it was so hard to find a reason to dislike him.

"I suppose it's only fair, seeing as we've one of them," Grantaire said, waving drunkenly at the impassive Javert, sitting alone in the corner of the shop, now strapped to a table.

"No," Éponine turned on him vehemently. She could hardly believe he would say that about one of his friends. "Jehan is worth _ten_ of him!" He gestured violently at the inspector.

"We are worse than traitors in their point of view," Combeferre said. "We are wanted dead more than anyone else."

"I don't give two shits about their point of view," Éponine huffed contemptuously. "I want Jehan _back_." She knew she sounded like a spoilt child, but he had been one of her dearest friends among the Amis.

"Are you set on having the prisoner dead?" Courfeyrac asked Enjolras, who was sitting just a couple feet away from Éponine.

She watched his face remain neutral and wished she could make the marble disappear.

"I am. But less than the life of Prouvaire." Enjolras cast a cursory glance upstairs.

Combeferre stood up. "I'll go ask for a truce. We'll give them the spy for Jehan."

"Wait." Enjolras held up a hand. Éponine also heard the noise of clicking weapons.

In the night they heard someone shout with the ferocity and recklessness of a doomed man. "Vive la France! Long live the future!"

A shot sounded, and Éponine leapt up, a hand covering her mouth, which had opened in a soundless cry. The back of her eyes burned with unshed tears, and her throat felt tight and swollen.

"They've shot him!" Combeferre looked shocked, as if he hadn't actually expected it to happen.

Éponine let out a strangled sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. She felt fingers curl around her wrist and when she looked down she saw the sleeve of a maroon jacket. Enjolras was looking at her with clear, cloudless blue eyes. Immediately she felt herself relax, but the tears still streamed down her face. When they subsided, still gripping that goddamned maroon sleeve like a lifeline, she tried to remember the last time she had cried for somebody.

She couldn't.

* * *

**AN:** I'm sorry.

* = Thomas Robert Bugeaud (15 October 1784 – 10 June 1849), duke d'Isly, was a marshal of France and Governer-General of Algeria.

** = "Cassimere" is another word for "cashmere".


	12. Not Even You

**Chapter Ten - Not Even You**

**Smiles1998:** It was meant to be a little confusing. Don't worry, you'll find you soon enough!  
**HermsP:** I assure you, I hope the Amis survive anything and everything thrown at them as well. Whether they will or not, I can't tell you. (And Bahorel has already died for good, I don't plan on magically resurrecting him, however much I love him.)  
**DramaRose13:** Imagine High School Musical's "Start of Something New" but with "Start of Some Jehelma". And thank you for the praise!

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

Feuilly, it turned out, had overestimated the food they would consume. He'd calculated a day without considering that they'd be fighting the entire time, and now after 16 hours of being in the barricade there was nothing left. Without food, Enjolras restricted the amount of brandy allowed to their little army (and also because Grantaire had drank most of the bottles they'd left out). Enjolras let them pass one bottle between them.

"It's a good thing Grantaire's drunk himself to sleep," Bossuet said, watching Joly take a hearty swig. "Because Father Hucheloup's wine is excellent." A couple other men murmured their agreement, thinking of the times they'd visited the wine shop without any thought of revolution or war or death.

"Even if he was awake," Feuilly said, looking up from where he was engraving some letters into the wall, "I'm the only one with the key to where it's hidden."

"He'd pick the lock," Courfeyrac pointed out. "Or he'd get Gavroche to."

"He wouldn't if Enjolras told him he couldn't," Joly said. The leader himself was currently upstairs with Combeferre, keeping watch.

Éponine shook her head with a little smile. "Gavroche doesn't listen to anybody. He does what he wants. He always has."

"Where is he, anyway?" Bossuet wondered, not seeing the young gamin among the gathered Amis.

"I saw Marius give him a piece of paper and he ran off," Courfeyrac said. "I think it was a letter."

_For Cosette_, Éponine thought, and for once had no ill wish against the girl. After all, it wasn't her fault she was beautiful and naturally kind to everybody. She'd even been nice to Éponine, when she and Azelma had bullied her as children.

She, however, wasn't happy with the thought of Gavroche running around without protection. She knew he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but he was known to take unnecessary risks, and after the close shave with the four Municipal guards Éponine wasn't about to take any chances. She'd already left Azelma behind at the Musain, where it was hopefully safe but out of her control. With Gavroche off to God knows where as well, Éponine felt powerless to help her siblings.

Courfeyrac caught the worried expression on her face and cast her a sideways glance. "I don't want him to get hurt, either, but I trust him to know what he's doing."

"He's very mature for his age," Feuilly supplied.

"Or we're just so immature we can't tell," smiled Bossuet.

Éponine snorted inelegantly. "Probably."

Combeferre poked his head down the stairs. "How many of you are down there?"

"Seven," Joly said, looking around. Besides the four Amis and Éponine, there were two more men that Feuilly knew from work, sitting together next to the spy. "And then there's the _gendarme_."

"Enjolras advises you all to get two or three hours of sleep," Combeferre relayed the message. "And we know what he means by 'advises'."

"He means 'orders'," chorused Joly and Bossuet. Éponine giggled, slightly delirious from hunger and exhaustion.

"Some sleep will be good," said Bossuet, and he promptly leaned over and closed his eyes. He bumped his bald head on a table and everyone laughed. Muttering something like "evil genius" with a sleepy smile, he drifted off to sleep, face still slightly squashed on the table leg.

* * *

They repaired the barricade and even raised it higher by about two feet. Any and all spare objects (including the closet Enjolras had wanted Éponine to hide in earlier) were thrown into the pile. The revolutionaries retired into the wine shop to have their last bit of rest. Courfeyrac and Marius alone kept vigil and they waited for Gavroche. Enjolras slipped out of the barricade unseen and prowled the streets, gathering information by the houses.

Morning came with a glorious periwinkle and rose sunrise, but no birds sang in the white light. Enjolras slipped back into the barricade through the opening and called a meeting around him and faced them all from his spot atop a table. His face was pale and seemed to glow a luminous silver.

"We are fighting against the whole army of Paris, a third of which currently surrounds this area upon which we stand. We will be attacked within the hour." He watched the crowd receive this information with a mixture of fear and thrill. "As for the people, they are not moving. THere is nothing to wait nor hope for. We are abandoned."

This news was met by an inexpressible silence. The insurgents were shocked into frozen statues. Enjolras saw Éponine's eyes alone, and they met his with a burning determination. She opened her mouth.

"Well, then let's show them what they're missing! Let's show the people that though they've abandoned us, we won't abandon them!"

Enjolras felt his own heart lift at her words and as the cheering of the crowd swelled around them he gave her a smile that only moved one half of his mouth. She returned it with a dazzling grin and raised her fist in the air, mouthing "Vive la France", followed by a quick wink. It sent him spiraling down that damned abyss and he was surer than ever he would love her until he breathed his dying breath.

But there was a message he had to give to the insurgents. "Quiet!" Enjolras called out, tearing his eyes from hers. He took a deep breath. "THere is not much chance we survive this final battle. Those of you that have a family... a wife, children, mothers to take care of... those of you that wish to leave may leave." There it was, laid out on the table before them: a chance to escape the bloodshed looming ahead. To _live_.

There was another moment of silence. Nobody spoke.

"We'll fight together an die together!" a man in the assembled throng called out. It was echoed by cheers.

"No!" Combeferre now shouted, standing up on the table also. Enjolras nodded, giving him permission to speak. "Do not just think of your own lives, men. And woman," he added a little sheepishly at Éponine. "You would give your lives to the République; so be it! So would I. But the lives of your wife and children! Would you leave behind a widow? A fatherless child? I have a mother and a father, but I do not think of my own. I think of yours, and therefore I am selfish! Would you also be selfish, and allow your loved ones to grieve your departure? We must not pity the dead, but the living. They suffer, we will not. Now, as yourselves again: Will you leave us for them?"

Courfeyrac then stood on a chair, so that he was also elevated. The true centre of the Amis stared straight at Combeferre and Enjolras in defiance, dark curls fanning out in a halo around his head so that it resembled a lion's mane.

"How can you ask us to flee from the revolution? We know we have families, and people that love us. They are who we fight for! We fight for freedom and equality; if we left, what would it do for them but let them continue on prisoners of the law? They would not be free, and they would still not have the rights they deserve! We fight not for ourselves, but for France. And thus, we are not selfish by staying. We are selfish by _leaving_!" Courfeyrac, in the heat of the moment, leaned over and wrenched the red flag from where it lay on the barricade, and held it over it head. "VIve la France! Long live the revolution!"

Combeferre, who easily accepted defeat when he saw it, laughed out loud and the two men leapt off their respective pedestals and embraced each other in a brotherly hug. Enjolras patted their backs with a wide grin. "Brilliant," he told them with a chuckle.

Someone else began to sing in a clear, young voice. It was Gavroche, who had slipped in unseen. He gave a quick nod to Marius to show he had delivered the message. Stepping into the middle of the circle, he lifted his head proudly and sang the very song Prouvaire had written to lift their spirits:

"Do you hear the people sing?  
Singing the song of angry men?  
It is the music of a people who  
Will not be slaves again!"

The other Amis joined in and eventually the entire group of tired, hungry, hopeful young men were singing a ragged yet enthusiastic rendition of the song their beloved late poet had written.

"There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!"

* * *

The song ended prematurely when a sentry let out a warning shout.

"Here comes a man in uniform!"

At once about fifteen muskets, pistols, and carbines were directed at the man in army gear, standing near the entrance. His face was hidden by a shadow, but his hands were raised in a gesture of compliance.

"Approach and show your face," ordered Enjolras, pistol fixed firmly on the figure. Éponine gripped her knife tightly.

The man came into the light and Éponine frowned. She'd seen the man before, but where? "I come as a volunteer," he said slowly. He had a deep, reassuring voice.

"You wear an army uniform," Courfeyrac said, bayonet just five inches from the newcomer's head. "Why should we trust you?"

"The uniform is why I was let through," he explained, arms still up. Éponine saw no weapon on his belt and her eyebrows shot up in confusion. Who volunteered for a revolutionary battle with no weapon?

"You've got some years behind you, sir," Joly said. It was true. The man's once-dark hair was grey and he had wrinkles along his face and hands.

"There's much that I can do," said the newcomer.

"We had another volunteer, named Javert," Courfeyrac said, menacingly. "He was a spy and now he's bound to a table downstairs."

"You see why we don't trust a volunteer," Combeferre said more calmly. He will face death, Monsieur. I am sure you won't want the same fate."

"I know this man!" Marius cried out, making his way to the front of the crowd. As soon as Marius said it, Éponine realised she did, too.

She tugged at Enjolras' sleeve. "He's a trustworthy man; it's true," she whispered, as Marius stood by the volunteer.

"His name is Monsieur Fauchelevent, a philanthropist, and he is as good a man as any."

Éponine remembered him clearly as the man her father kept running into and trying to fraud. He was the man who had bought Cosette. She also walked up to him, a small apologetic smile on her face.

"Monsieur, I believe you know my father," she said.

He looked at her. "Do I?"

She took off Gavroche's hat, and waves of dark hair tumbled down her back. "My name is Éponine Jondrette, but before that it was Éponine Thenardier."

Fauchelevent was now looking at her with renewed interest. "Ah. I do remember that name."

"I'd like to apologise for the crimes my father committed against you."

He looked doubly surprised. "Well, tell him he is forgiven, and that he should not feel the need to return any of the francs of given him as debt."

Éponine smirked. "I don't speak to him anymore, but I'm sure he wouldn't return a single sous even if you asked for it."

Fauchelevent smiled at her, and he had the sort of smile that comforted anyone it was directed at. "I'd imagine not."

There was a rustle in the barricade above them, and all of a sudden the elderly man had taken Courfeyrac's musket and pointed it at the top right corner of it. He fired a shot, and they heard the sharpshooter tumble back down the other side of the barricade. The sniper had been aiming at Enjolras.

"I owe you my life," said the leader gratefully. "Ask for anything you'd like, and I'll give it to you, as long as it is within my power."

"Just the spy," Fauchelevent responded. "I can take care of him."

Enjolras eyed him carefully, and then nodded. Éponine thought she saw his face flash relief that he wouldn't have to kill the man himself. "Be my guest," he said, and gave him a pistol and a knife.

Fauchelevent nodded at them and went into the basement.

Éponine closed her eyes when they heard the shot.

* * *

The next battle started in the afternoon of the same day, when the heavy artillery arrived. Their barricade withstood the first wave of cannon balls, but it was evident it was not going to take a second.

"Fire!" Enjolras cried, and the insurgents fired. Twenty-six of the gunners fell and the other side hurried to replace them. Joly and Combeferre ran about, helping bandage and stitch up the injured. Five others, including Fauchelevent and Éponine, reloaded the muskets and handed ready ones to the awaiting revolutionaries.

Enjolras glanced back at the enemy. They were preparing for another volley.

"We need to find a way to fortify the barricade!" Bossuet shouted from the back, where he picked up a new carbine from a law student.

"We're working on it but we'll need more time!" came the voice of another man, somewhere from the far left. It was Paquet, a seller of firewood who had a stall near Feuilly's.

_More time_, Enjolras thought. He looked through a gap at the gunner currently loading a cannon. The gunner was an artillery sergeant, young, no more than twenty-four. Enjolras drew his pistol and placed the end of it in the gap.

"He could be your brother," said someone next to him. It was Combeferre, watching his commander aim at the young man.

"He is," replied Enjolras. His jaw was tense and his mind was both scarily still and buzzing with activity. He held the pistol steady.

"Then don't shoot him. Spare the man." Combeferre knew it was useless, but he said it anyway.

"Leave me alone. We must do what we must." Enjolras pulled the trigger, a lone tear making a line of marble skin through the dirt on his cheeks. The sergeant staggered with the impact of the bullet and flopped back on top of his own cannon, blood flowing from the wound in his chest.

It bought them a couple more minutes. In that time they found several mattresses they flung over the barricade so that they lay against it on the other side.

"Hopefully that is enough," Feuilly said, reloading his own pistol.

"It will have to be," Enjolras answered.

When the cannons, fired, the balls thudded against the mattresses with no ricochet, rolling harmlessly back down the slope.

The barricade was safe.

* * *

"We are running out of ammunition," Enjolras announced, as the revolutionaries reigned in their bearings from the previous attack and took stock of what they had.

Éponine had quickly learned of this when she reached for a ball to load into the musket and realised her hand could touch the bottom of the bag. There would be about eight shots per person before they ran out completely.

"I can go outside and gather some off the dead guards," Marius offered.

Fauchelevent immediately stepped forward. "No, let me. He is young and has a life ahead of him. I am old and you could go without me."

Enjolras shook his head at the both of them. "I will not take that risk."

Éponine heard a cry that made her blood run cold in her veins.

"You need someone quick, and I volunteer!" It was her brother, launching himself onto the barricade and climbing over it.

"What are you doing? Get down!" Enjolras commanded, but he did not halt.

"Someone stop him!"

"Gavroche, come back!"

"Gavroche? Oh, God, Gavroche, no, no!" This last frenzied scream was Courfeyrac, and he charged for the barricade and tried to climb after the nimble gamin. Joly and Marius restrained him from going any further.

Éponine had frozen in horror, staring up at her brother. She watched him disappear down the other side. A second ticked by and there was a shot. She scrabbled up to barricade also. "Gavroche Thenardier, you better come back right now!" she shrieked, foot slipping on a particularly velvety armchair.

Gavroche was singing a song, one that he'd made up on the spot, as he filled up his basket with ammunition.

"Little people know when  
Little people fight,  
We-"

The boy jumped when there was a shot. It hit a grandfather clock behind him. He turned and gave the army and enormous mocking smile, slowly reaching down to pick up his basket again. The entire barricade were staring at this appalling display of fearlessness.

"We may look easy pickings  
But we've got some bite!"

This time he was hit. Gavroche staggered back a few steps, clutching his basket tightly in his little hands. The revoulutionaries let out a cry of alarm. Courfeyrac struggled against Joly and Marius, and Éponine swore loudly as her fingers nearly slipped off the cabinet she was holding onto.

Gavroche clutched at his wounded side while he dropped a bag of gunpowder into the basket.

"So never kick a dog  
Because he's just a pup!"

A bullet implanted itself into Gavroche's leg with such force that his feet were sent flying from under him, and he fell face first into the floor. Checking that his basket was full, he flung it over the barricade as he kept singing, voice hoarse with pain but still taunting the enemy.

"We'll fight like twenty armies  
And we won't give up!  
So you'd better run for cover  
When the pup grows-"

The final gunshot hit the twelve-year-old in the chest. Gavroche faltered, face still twisted in a humour-filled grin as he fell back, blood flowing from his body.

A pair of strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her back down, but not before she saw her brother falling to the ground to join the other dead bodies. She screamed in agony, the loss filling her so to the brim that she experienced a sense of horrible, pure emptiness.

The arms around her kept their hold. Someone was shouting her name, but it sounded like it came from very far away. Éponine could just see the sobbing Courfeyrac on the ground, and vaguely wondered if she should join him there. Her own eyes were dry. She had no more tears. There was so much misery it was near unbearable, and she had never wished more that she could just fall into the void and forget about it all.

Except, someone was keeping her away from the edge.

She looked down and saw that it was none other than Enjolras holding her. This information came to her with a shock and all of a sudden she became aware of the world around her.

There were people running out of the barricade, ignoring the bullets, to get Gavroche's body. Courfeyrac was one of them, and now he was sprawled over it, wailing her brother's name. Over it all she heard someone screaming, high, keening, and hair-raising.

She realised it was herself partly because she was the only one in the barricade who could make that high a sound.

Éponine stopped shrieking and turned into a quivering mess of disheveled hair and quick, pained gasps. She pressed herself into Enjolras' chest and burrowed her head into his neck. His arms hadn't moved, except to hold her tighter.

It was he who had been shouting her name but now he was whispering it in her ear. "Ponine, Ponine, Ponine," he recited, and with each repetition of the word she felt herself calm down, and the more she calmed down he loosened his hold on her.

"Gavroche," she said once his released her, azure eyes still fixed steadily on her own. Enjolras didn't say a word but broke their gaze and stepped to the side. There, lying not far from them, was her brother.

Éponine's eyes grew round and she stumbled forward, arms outstretched. "Gavroche," she repeated, falling to her knees next to her brother. "I told you to come back," she said in a scolding, motherly tone. "Why did you do it? You brave, stupid boy." She stroked his cheek with one dirty hand.

Courfeyrac knelt next to her and she took off the vest, laying it over Gavroche. She suddenly remembered the owner of the vest. "I hope you don't mind," she said distantly.

She felt a large, calloused hand clasp her own. "No," Courfeyrac replied. "I would have given it to him anyway."

"Thank you for being his big brother, Courf," Éponine said, transfixed by the still form of the boy.

"Not a good one," he said, voice cracking. "I let him to this to himself."

Éponine smiled humourlessly. "Don't you remember what I said? Gav doesn't listen to anybody. Not even me. Not even you."

* * *

**AN: Ahh! I'm so sorry about this, but really, I want to be as canon as possible.**

**Did you spot the reference? (And for the record, I think Combeferre or Valjean would both make excellent Dumbledores.)**

**Also, did I mention how much I loved all of you?**


	13. The End of the Story

**Chapter Eleven - The End of the Story**

**DramaRose13:** It's also a bit "Run Away With Me" from UAoSB so you can take what you will from that. Just so you know, I'm not planning on making the Jehelma a major thing, I just couldn't resist putting it in because they are so damn adorable.  
**Smiles1998: **Prepare to find out! :)  
**HermsP:** ...What are you resigned from? Sorry, I didn't understand haha :/

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

In the basket Gavroche died for there were enough cartridges for each person to have seven more. This made fifteen total. When Combeferre and Courfeyrac distributed these Fauchelevent alone declined them, leaving fifteen extra much-needed cartridges.

The death of Gavroche had not ceased the attack of the army and the National guard. They had, however, stopped firing grape-shots and had started aiming for the centre of the barricade, hoping to blow an opening.

The moment this happened, Enjolras leapt to his feet and issued a command. "Quick! Half of you, take paving stones and block up the windows! Make haste!" He had seen a platoon of men with axes and hammers coming to the front of the army lines. It was the sappers, coming to destroy the barricade before the others stormed the insurgents.

There was a burst of activity as they carried out the order. Within a minute they completed the task, and Enjolras kept watch on the advancing sappers.

On a whim Enjolras also called out: "And bring out the wine, too!"

There was a resounding cheer as men stampeded into the bedroom, lead by Feuilly with the key. _At least their last drinks are going to be the Poteau's best_, Enjolras thought wryly before ordering another round of fire.

He was thinking fast. They were nearing the final stand; he could see this clearly. The barricade was weak and they hadn't the time to repair it. The sappers would break in easily with the sheer number of army men, and they would have little to no chance of surviving.

They closed up all the remaining openings with the paving stones and iron bars. The wine shop would be their fortress now.

Enjolras turned to Marius. "I'm giving you command of this situation. I'm going in to give the last orders." They exchanged a nod and a firm handshake, knowing this very well may be the last time they saw each other, before the blonde leader went inside. The kitchen had been turned into the sick bay, overseen by Joly and Combeferre, with some help from Éponine. Enjolras ordered for the door to be nailed up.

He went downstairs. "Do you have axes?"

Feuilly, who was in charge of the lower level, answered for the men there. "Yes!"

"Keep your axes ready to break the staircase. How many are there?"

"Two, and a poleax."

"Excellent. How many muskets?"

"Thirty-four."

"There are twenty-six of us left standing," Enjolras said. Feuilly almost shivered but stopped himself just in time. "So there are eight extra. Keep them loaded and nearby. Twenty of you, out to the barricade right when you hear the drum beat for the charge, and listen to Marius and Courfeyrac's orders if I fall. The remaining six, to the windows and the gaps, ready to ambush them when they come. Am I clear?"

"Yes!" came the answering cry of the people of the revolution, and Enjolras nodded.

"Good. Men, comrades... it was a pleasure fighting with you."

And thus, as June 6th ended, the final battle for the barricade began.

* * *

The barricade trembled at the first shot, but held. Éponine watched it with glittering eyes. The army was advancing quickly, their marching steps received by the insurgents with returning fire.

"Fire at will!" she heard Enjolras shout above the tumult, and caught his blonde hair flying in the wind as he fired his own carbine into the incoming men.

The army began to scale the barricade. Seeing this, the revolutionaries climbed up to meet them. Bayonets flashed gold with reflected sunlight and red with glistening blood. The sounds of living and dying men filled the air and all Éponine could see was the pure image of war.

With every man that fell Éponine felt something akin to a shot into her own breast, but with every man that fell it also grew duller. She had stopped handing muskets to people, because they were just grabbing whatever they could find. She still reloaded them, but she also fired a pistol at whoever got too close to her brothers in arms.

People began to truly realise that they would not leave this battle alive. The revolutionaries turned to the people, pounding on the doors of the citizens, pleading to be saved. The people locked their windows and their doors, turning away. Men that persisted banging on the houses were killed by the guards behind them, all too willing to take advantage.

Bossuet fell with a broken cry, and then Feuilly did, shouting "Vive la France" to the sky. Combeferre was impaled by bayonets as he bent over a wounded man, intent on bandaging his injuries.

Éponine soon stopped feeling anything in accordance to death. People died around her, and she shot others down without a second thought. Gone was the girl who still held sorrow and grief for extinguished lives, and all that was left was a hollow woman firing a gun into the chests of faceless, dying men.

Then she turned and saw Marius, whirling about with bayonet, musket, and pistol. Men fell around him like flies, and there was a brief second where she admired his prowess in battle. A musket breached his defenses.

"Marius!" she called out in warning, but it was too late. Marius crumpled and tumbled off the barricade, where she could no longer see him.

_Well, that's that_, thought Éponine, mindlessly stabbing a man in the heart as she registered the death of her first friend.

She turned around and this time she was faced by something that made her stop moving altogether.

Enjolras was covered in blood, but nearly none of it was his own. He stood at the entrance of the Poteau, carbine in hand. He picked men off one by one with a stern, measured expression, calculating each shot carefully before firing it. Guards died on their feet without even knowing he was there. In Éponine's eyes he was an angel of war, sweat glistening on his forehead, a cut on his lip, damp hair falling in golden ringlets, framing fiery blue eyes. She thought if she were to give him a nickname it would be Apollo.

Suddenly she recalled what she had told him, from what felt like ages in the past but was in reality just three days ago. She had told him she didn't love Marius. _And_ you_ - I don't know how, but _you_ made me realise it!_

It seemed she knew now. It was a most inopportune time to think of it, but she _knew_. He made her realise it because she'd only known she wasn't in love with Marius since she had fallen in love with someone else. And it had made her know something was wrong because he had been where Marius hadn't. Enjolras was there, forever engraved into her because she'd done the thing she'd never intended to do: fall in love with him.

"Enjolras!" she called to him, intent on telling him all that she had discovered. "I've figured it out!"

He turned around, looking confused. And then his eyes widened in horror as the man next to him died from a bullet to the head. Éponine wondered if she'd suddenly regained her reaction to death, because she felt a sharp pain in her left arm.

All of a sudden she was on the ground, and when she looked down alarm at herself she saw red blossom on Enjolras' white, coffee-stained shirt.

_Oh._

* * *

It almost felt like cheating, how easily he was killing these men. Enjolras brought down army man after army man, and found himself full of grim satisfaction.

"Enjolras!" He recognised that voice, because it held a very special place in his mind, and triggered an immediate response. He turned around automatically.

"I've figured it out!" _Figured it out?_ Enjolras was confused. He wasn't sure if she was speaking in some kind of code.

When she got shot he barely noticed the man next to him collapse on the floor with a howl of pain. All he saw was Éponine falling, falling, blood spurting from a wound. She fell into the sea of men and Enjolras caught a glimpse of Joly racing to her side before the world slowed to a stop.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. Éponine had been shot and she would most likely perish. He would die for Patria and live for Éponine, but now she was gone and he was fated to die for the country. Knowing the end of the story made it much easier for him to fight until it came.

Enjolras fired his carbine and realised he had no more cartridges left. With a shrug he spun and whacked the man in the head with the butt of the weapon instead. He fell with a grunt and Enjolras knew he could probably keep fighting as long as his carbine wasn't broken to pieces.

Gradually he felt himself be driven back into the Poteaux and up the stairs. _They mustn't have had time to knock it down_, he thought, thinking of Feuilly's dead body. The muzzle went flying as he brought the carbine down on the head of a guard once more.

And then he was backed up against a window with the barrel of a carbine in his right hand, all that was left of his weapon. He faced twenty guards, both National and Municipal. His carbine was now useless, and he could hardly see with the sweat and blood running down his face. Without blinking he dropped his carbine and bared his breast.

_I'm sorry, Éponine, but I have nothing left to live for._

"Kill me."

* * *

Two heads poked around the corner. They gazed upon the crumbling barricade with wide eyes. On the second story of the Poteaux there seemed to be some kind of commotion. He could see the blurred outline of Enjolras' red vest.

"Do they know we're here?" he voiced his thoughts.

The other person turned her head back and gave him _that_ look.

"Right. Stupid question."

His companion rolled her eyes and refocused her attention back on the Poteau.

"Enjolras is still alive, I have to go help him-"

Her hand flew up in a signal demanding silence. He shut up immediately. (He really was easy to order around.)

"I think I hear something."

Then, a distinctly female voice shrieked something incomprehensible.

She whipped back around to face him. Her hood fell back slightly, revealing more of her curling red hair, but she didn't reach up to stop it like she normally would. Her eyes were round with fright.

"That's my sister!"

* * *

The first thing Éponine noticed when she woke up was that Joly wasn't lying dea on top of her anymore. Someone must have peeled him off of her, seen her unconscious, and assumed she was dead as well.

The wine shop was deadly silent. Dead bodies lay scattered around her. She swallowed heavily when her eyes caught the still form of Combeferre, the three bayonets still imbedded in his chest. Tears pricked at her eyes but she willed them away.

Half of her marveled at the fact that she had not been killed. Yes, she'd a pretty deep wound in her left arm, but it hadn't been deadly and she was right handed, anyway. She'd never been so grateful and upset at the medical student for saving her life.

He'd stitched up the wound and was in the process of bandaging it with a strip of linen when he'd gotten shot twice in the back. He had slumped on top of her, and in her shock, Éponine just barely managed to turn her face away before they bumped foreheads. The barrel of the musket he'd reached for just before his death, however, had fallen onto her head and she'd been knocked unconscious.

_All these concussions are not doing me any good_, Éponine thought dazedly as she propped herself up to a sitting position. She glanced down at her dress, soaked through with Joly's blood. It was really not a big surprise they'd mistaken her for dead.

There was a musket lying close to her - Joly's, perhaps? - that Éponine used to heave herself onto her feet. She'd lost a decent amount of blood, she knew, because the wine shop was doing that familiar swimming before her eyes. Too bad Enjolras hadn't been here to save her from the blood loss like last time.

_Enjolras. _The thought of him sent panic through her system. Was he alright? Had he been killed? This second notion made her heart beat faster as she glanced wildly around her, dreading to see him among the bodies on the floor. He wasn't there, Éponine had to look away when she realised Feuilly was lying just several metres away from Combeferre.

A masculine roar of defiance followed by the bang of a carbine going off and the stomping of feet up some stairs pricked at the back of Éponine's neck. Without a second thought, she raced towards the source of noise to the other side of the shop and bit back a scream of horror at the freshly dead Courfeyrac, a bullet and bayonet through the head and stomach respectively, lying prone on the staircase to the second floor. She saw his feral grin, frozen in death, and thought of Gavroche. _How fitting that the two both die smiling_, she reflected bitterly.

The shuffling of boots on the floor above her shook her out of her miserable reverie. Something fell to the floor with a clatter.

"Kill me."

The all-too-familiar voice literally staggered the gamine, whose hand flew to her throat in disbelief and shock. Something fiery roared in her chest and suddenly Éponine was leaping over Courfeyrac and sprinting up the steps. The sight before her took the air from her lungs.

Enjolras stood alone before about twenty guards. He had dropped his destroyed carbine (which he had clearly been using to hit people with) at his feet. His stance was proud and unafraid, and his blue eyes were calm and accepting. Even from the other side of the room Éponine thought she could see his vision of a better France in the azure orbs. Her heart pounded so hard she was scared the guards would hear it and turn around.

One of the guards spoke. "Do you wish your eyes bandaged?"

"No." His voice did not waver. Éponine experienced a surge of pride.

"Was it really you who killed the sergeant of artillery?" another asked. Éponine was pretty sure the revolutionaries had killed many of the artillery men, but then she remembered the one that had been loading the cannon when Enjolras shot him with perfect accuracy, giving them the precious minutes they needed to save the barricade.

"Yes." He sounded grave but sure in his decision to be executed.

The guards took aim, and Éponine opened her mouth to shout, cry, threaten- whatever it was that would save this man, she would do without hesitation.

And Grantaire came roaring from the back room, drunk with passion and startlingly sober. "Vive la République! Count me in!" he cried, pushing himself to Enjolras' side. "Vive la République! Two at one shot!"

Éponine would have laughed at the expression on Enjolras' face if the situation wasn't so dire. He was staring at Grantaire in a mixture of disapproval and absolute admiration. The dark-haired man turned to the commander of the barricade with an expression of respect.

"Will you permit it?" Grantaire asked with utter tenderness. Enjolras smiled and shook his hand.

Three things happened at once. The leader of the guard, a sergeant, raised his musket. Grantaire's eyes found Éponine's and they widened in surprise. Éponine screamed.

"You'll hafta shoot me too!" Éponine shrieked in a frenzied flurry of half-formed words, and as the guard turned to her she ran forwards and shielded Enjolras and Grantaire with her body.

The guards hesitated, because Éponine's disguise as a boy had long been blown, and normally women weren't shot firing-squad style.

Enjolras gripped Éponine's forearm. "What are you doing?" he hissed, fear audible through his tone. "I thought you'd been shot." Did she scare him? If anything, he was the formidable one, having killed at least a dozen men through whacking them with a gun alone.

She didn't answer, and instead watched the ensemble of guards intently.

"Move out of the way, girl," the leader of the guards said gruffly. "And you might be spared."

"Absolutely not," she said firmly, and the hand on her forearm tightened. "If they die, I die."

"Éponine, listen to them," whispered Enjolras, voice trembling a bit.

"Shut up," said Éponine.

The guards exchanged glances and then the sergeant raised his musket again. The other guards followed his lead. Éponine reached for Grantaire and Enjolras' hands, and the three grasped each other's fingers, gazing into the jaws of death, forcing themselves to keep their eyes open.

A single shot rang out and the guards looked around, confused. The leader of the guard fell to the ground, a bullet in the back of his head. Éponine, Enjolras, and Grantaire stared at the last person they'd expected to see saving them.

Behind the guards was none other than Montparnasse, his pistol still aimed at the space where the sergeant's head was. "We're even," said the man, looking straight at the open-mouthed Éponine, and was pierced by eight muskets in a deafening bang and a cloud of smoke.

Grantaire and Éponine shared a quick look of mutual understanding: save Enjolras. At the same time that Montparnasse was shot Éponine and Grantaire pushed the leader of the revolution out through the window behind them. At the crash, the guards turned around and the eleven men who were not reloading their muskets aimed at the remaining pair. They leapt out together, holding each other's shoulders for support as they fell the two stories to the ground.

Grantaire's knee gave way with an almighty crack and a cry of pain. Éponine felt her newly healed ankle sprain itself again, but was otherwise unaffected from the fall because she'd landed on Enjolras, who was groaning in pain.

"_Merde_. Are you okay?" Éponine rolled of the blonde man and got to her knees, checking frantically for injuries on the two of them.

"I think he landed on Bossuet," Grantaire said, very matter-of-factly.

"Just his luck," Enjolras grunted, gingerly poking at a dislocated shoulder as he sat up. Éponine was incredulous that _Enjolras_ of all people would try and make a joke at a time like this._  
_

"Run!" she suddenly yelled, and pulled the two of them up, not even thinking of her own injuries that blazed with pain as she did so. The entire guard (minus the sergeant) was aiming at them through the open window.

They ran.

* * *

They found themselves in a little alley. They pushed piles of fallen bricks into the front of it, where it would shield them from view as long as they crouched down (not that they wanted to stand with their respective wounds, anyway).

Éponine and Grantaire immediately slumped to the ground and began trying to bandage themselves with a shirt. Enjolras sat silent and still for a long time and then suddenly, he turned on them, a familiar fire in his eyes.

"I cannot believe you did that!" he thundered, treating them both to a ferocious glower. "I was prepared to die- to go down in one shining blaze of glory- to-"

Éponine cut him off with a resounding smack to the face. Grantaire cracked a small grin. "You promised," she growled, eyes flashing, "that you would live for me."

If he were completely honest, Grantaire would admit that even from the floor Éponine could be extremely intimidating.

"I had nothing left to live for!" Enjolras exclaimed, turning on her, but the moment their eyes met he softened. "I thought you'd been killed, Ponine, and without you I had nothing left to live for. Just Patria to _die_ for." His eyes were burning with desperation and longing when he asked finally, "Why did you do it?"

Éponine had never seen him so out of control, and it gave her the strength to answer truthfully.

"Because," she said, "I'm in love with you."

When he didn't answer immediately her heart trembled. Had she made a mistake? Had she misread the previous words he'd said at the barricade? Did he mean something else? She braced herself for immense agony.

Then his face cleared, and something bright came shining through. He smiled a full,_ real_ smile, and Éponine felt a little dizzy. Enjolras was breathless when he finally responded.

"You're insane," he said, and then softly held her face between his hands and brought her lips to his in a searing kiss.

She was pleasantly surprised to discover that for someone who was so inexperienced with women, he was quite good at kissing. They stayed entangled in their heated embrace before they broke apart.

"What kind of answer was that?" Éponine panted, afraid to hope again, though inside she was already dancing with joy.

Enjolras' lips curled in that sinfully sexy crooked half-grin, and Éponine knew she would follow this man wherever he went.

* * *

He and his companion watched the fall, and the escape. He sagged in relief once they were out of sight, holding onto the wall for support. "They're safe," he breathed. "They've survived."

"For now," his companion said, as she pulled them back around the corner. "We can't be there for much longer, the army's bound to start looking for them."

He was silent, even as she dragged them in the opposite direction of their friends. "They really think I'm dead, then?"

Azelma looked back at him, compassion filling her green eyes. "To the rest of France, Jean Prouvaire is just another tragic casualty of war."

* * *

**AN: ****The good news is that Enjolras, Éponine, Grantaire, Jehan, and Azelma are all alive. The bad news is that everyone else is either dead or missing.**


	14. The Aftermath

**PART IV: RECOVERY**

**Chapter Twelve - The Aftermath**

**Smiles1998:** I guess you'll find out :) Thanks, I don't even know how I came up with Montparnasse, I guess it just happened and it worked.  
**AllTheLoveAndAllTheWaiting:** Thank you so much! I tried to make the story sort of a "What If Enjolras Had Run Into Éponine at the Rue Plumet?" kind of thing, and that's a lot of the reason why many of them still died.  
**keepcalmandreadhp:** Haha, that was my intention! :)  
**HermsP:** I love you too 3 I'm a fan of bittersweet endings, so I left enough alive for them to grieve but also be grateful they'd survived (in Ép and Enjy's case, for each other).  
**DramaRose:** Yes, notice Valjean (aka Fauchelevent) and Marius were suspiciously not among the dead bodies Éponine saw littering the ground... *hint* *nudge*

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

He glanced at Grantaire, who was sitting at the far end of the alley trying and failing to look like he hadn't been paying attention. Éponine giggled and reached over to prod him.

"You're a terrible eavesdropper," she told him and he looked up from dressing his wounds with a sheepish smile.

"It was hard not to listen in. I've been waiting for you two to come to your senses for longer than it took for Enjolras to realise he had feelings for you," he said, brushing black curls from his face. Éponine felt a rush of affection for this man- the sarcastic, surprisingly sophisticated, wine-loving cynic who acceptive things with they came with an ironic comment and a swig of alcohol. He was twice the man people saw him as, and she felt honoured to know him.

"I've just remembered," he said suddenly, and from his coat he drew a bottle of brandy, obviously stolen from the Poteau.

"This is hardly the time to drink," Enjolras scolded him, moving to swat the bottle from his hands.

"It's the perfect time to drink," replied Grantaire as he moved it out of danger's way. "Though I took this out for another reason."

"What is it?" Éponine inquired. She'd never heard him do anything with alcohol except drink it.

"We can disinfect wounds with it," Grantaire said triumphantly, opening the bottle and pouring some into his palm before patting it onto a gash, wincing a little.

"That's actually brilliant," Éponine said, smiling. She unwrapped the linen on her arm and dripped alcohol into the bullet wound, secretly relishing the way Enjolras stared at the it with obvious concern.

They sat about in silence, nursing their injuries. Éponine saw that though they'd had their fair share of self-treating experience (Thenardier's beatings, Enjolras' riots, and Grantaire's bar fights required this), they didn't really know exactly what they were doing. She wished Joly and Combeferre were there with them.

Grantaire appeared to be following the same train of thought. "They're gone," he said, and Éponine heard the strain in his voice.

"The guard? I hope so." Enjolras cast a glance over the little of wall of brick he'd thrown together.

"No, the Amis. The revolutionaries. They're all gone, except us." Enjolras' eyes moved to Grantaire's and the pain was reflected in the other's eyes.

"We don't know that," Éponine said, helplessly trying to be positive. "Maybe they... you know, just _looked_dead."

"No," Enjolras said forcefully. "Grantaire's right. They're dead and gone. All of them. And it's because-"

"It's not because of you," Éponine cut in sharply, guessing his next words. "They weren't fighting for you, they were fighting for France, like you were." She noticed Grantaire didn't meet her eyes as she said that, but didn't say anything about it.

"It was my responsibility to lead them in and out of battle alive," Enjolras growled, tearing at his hair. "And I failed miserably."

"We all knew the chances of dying were tenfold higher than the chances of surviving," Grantaire told him, as if this would make him feel better. "If anything it's the people's fault. They didn't come with us. They hid like cowards and closed their doors to us."

"It's not their fault that they didn't want to die," said Éponine, though she couldn't help but agree, remembering the bloody faces of the men that had perished with people of France in their hearts.

* * *

"You still didn't tell me how you managed to get both of us out of there without a single scrape."

Azelma shot him a smirk. "A true magician never reveals her secrets."

"I went along with your plan, didn't I? You promised if I did you'd tell me." He crossed his arms and jutted out his chin.

"Oh, fine." Azelma sat down in the alley. This is going to be a long one."

"We have time."

She took a deep breath, and began. "I snuck out of the Musain quick and easy. Enjolras' room has a window and it's on the top floor, so the roof was the fast way out. Even better, from the roof I could see everything. I followed the noise of the gunshots and jumped the roofs to the Poteaux, and watched you get captured by the National guard. I said to myself, "I am going to get that man out", and I did."

"Hang on. If you can get out of places so easily, why didn't you escape your parents before?"

Her face darkened. "Thenardier has a way of finding where you are," she said. "As long as I was under his keeping I was trapped. But when Ép and the Amis rescued me I was free; I felt unstoppable."

"So you just went away?"

She shrugged. "Éponine will understand. Anyway, after I figured out where you were staying, I went back to the barricade and picked out a uniform to wear. I dressed up as a drummer, you know, because they're usually younger and smaller, and walked right into their camp.

"I found the door to the basement you were in. I stole the patrolling schedule off a guard and picked the right times to go places where drummers didn't normally go. One person asked why I didn't have my drum with me, but other than that I blended right in. I made a plan to get you out, and it was going to be real complicated, but then I overheard the captain say they were going to execute you. It was the perfect chance. I sabotaged the captain's gun when he wasn't looking - by his face I could tell he wanted to do it himself.

"I went out and bought red dye, then I put it in a thin cotton bag and put it in my pocket. I let it bleed through and thirteen people asked me whether I'd gone to the medical bay yet your not. When the time came I sealed up the bag and went down to you. I just picked the lock and went in when no guards were patrolling the are.

"You know the rest. I told you to act valiant and dying, and you did it perfectly. You even broke the bag right on time, too. The captain's gun went off but didn't shoot a bullet, and you fell with red dye on your shirt. Without checking whether you were dead or not they tossed you in with the dead bodies, where I was waiting for you. We ran off and they never knew I was there."

Jehan was in awe. "Wow. Are you sure you've never done this before?"

She tossed her orange hair with a smirk. "I suppose I'm just talented."

* * *

"I know a doctor who won't ask questions," Éponine said.

"They won't need to. Enjolras' face is recognisable throughout the nation." Grantaire tapped him on the nose with his bottle. Enjolras swatted him away with an irritated expression.

"He owes me a life debt."

"How do you know he won't go back on his word? Paris will be offering a lot of money on my head." Enjolras' voice was dull and emotionless. He'd spent years fighting for Patria and she simply slapped him in the face with the pain of reality.

Éponine glanced back at them. "We have to take the risk."

"Besides, I'm starving," Grantaire added. "Maybe he'll give us food."

"Don't get your hopes up."

* * *

"We are going to England," his companion declared, out of the blue.

"What?" He jerked up in surprise. "England?"

"We're wanted in this country. Well, you are. Either way, I've bought two tickets to London by ship."

Jehan was surprised and thankful that she was planning on coming along with him. After all, she had no obligation to do anything more for him; she'd already saved his life. Something occurred to him, and he turned to her with a furrowed brow. "You've _bought_ tickets? How did you get the money?" He watched her mime slipping her hand in a pocket. "You stole it?" he gasped, scandalised.

She shrugged. "I do what I have to do."

"Azelma!"

"Oh, don't be a wuss. Be grateful! We're getting a one-way trip out of this shithole of a country!"

"But Enjolras! R! Your sister!"

"They can wait. We can tell them how we pulled off the grand escape when we're sure we're out of the water."

"It doesn't feel right, leaving them behind."

"If you get caught, it's the chain gang- that's worse than death. It's England or that, 'Han."

Well, he couldn't resist her when she called him 'Han.

* * *

"What's wrong?" Enjolras had noticed her rubbing at her eyes. The tears and come back.

"Montparnasse," she muttered after some indecision.

He frowned and pulled her into his lap. They'd grown much more physical with each other since they'd confessed of their feelings, surprising them both with how comfortable they were just to be in the arms of the other.

She rested her head in his neck, breathing in the smell of sweat, blood, and the musky scent of Enjolras. "You shouldn't think about him," he replied softly, the usual harsh tone gone, and Éponine was immensely happy that she had finally cracked the marble - and that she was the only one capable of it.

"He saved us," Éponine whispered into his collar bone. Her chin seemed to perfectly into the dip just above it.

"I know."

"He did it because he felt guilty about me."

"He did it because he loved you."

Éponine sat up straight and looked at Enjolras in surprise. "What?"

"Montparnasse loved you, I think, but in his own twisted way." The moon was reflected in his clear blue eyes.

"He was a bandit, a murderer, and a rapist. He wasn't capable of love."

"And I'm the emotionless, rich only child who lead forty-three people into battle only for forty to die, and who knows how many others." Éponine looked at Enjolras, and his eyes were full of anguish again. It seemed to be the only thing in his eyes recently.

"Enjolras..." she didn't know what to say, or to do, except that she wanted to make him smile again. She pressed her lips to his.

He kissed her back, and she felt something wet on her cheeks. When they pulled away, she saw that they both had tears in their eyes. "They're really gone," said Éponine. She was so close to him she could count every teardrop hanging on his eyelashes.

"They loved you like a sister," he whispered back, and they held onto each other tightly as if it was their last link to life.

"Sometimes I imagine our lives if we'd all survived."

"We'd be free."

"Courfeyrac would help me raise Gavroche and give him a role model... a really, really bad role model." Éponine gave him a watery grin.

There it was, the beginning of his half smile, the tiny lilting of a lip. "Combeferre would finally teach you chess. And let you win every time. He'd pretend as if he was actually bad at the game."

Éponine laughed a little. "Jehan would teach me how to write poetry. I still have the one he gave me."

"Feuilly would get you to help him decorate his fans. He always said your fingers were infinitely more delicate and better than his at painting his fans."

"Bahorel would teach me to fight, and next time you won't have to save me 'cause I'll have done it myself."

"Bossuet would play checkers with you and lose every time."

Éponine giggled, thinking of the man's horrible luck. "I'd tell Joly how to get Musichetta to calm down during a fight: it's reciting Shakespeare. She melts at the words of that Englishman. She loves him almost as much as Joly and Bossuet."

They stared at each other, smiling through their tears. "I'm glad you and Grantaire and Montparnasse saved me," Enjolras confessed.

"Me, too," Éponine said. I'm glad I didn't die doing something stupid like trying to save Marius."

"Me, too," said Enjolras, his full-blown smile finally in place. She felt herself fall in love all over again.

* * *

**AN: So basically from now on it's going to be a series of little scenes of their lives after the barricade. I want the aftermath, but I don't want to cover years with such detail.**

**It's the home stretch, everybody.**


	15. The Baroness Pontmercy

**Chapter Thirteen - The Baroness Pontmercy**

**IvyGreen13:** Thank you so much!  
**Smiles1998:** Perhaps :)  
**HermsP:** That's why I love to write her so much! I think it will be easier if they have each other to lean on :)  
**SandyH-B:** Thank you loads! I'm glad it makes sense; I wasn't sure it would when I was writing it because it did it in snippets and kind of linked it together. It's good that it worked.  
**DramaRose13:** I've never watched the anime (though I will, someday, once I decide to get off my arse and do it), but there are many other portrayals of Azelma which show her to be more submissive and fickle. I initially wanted her to be like that, but then I decided that is a trait that simply does not occur in the other Thenardiers, and that badass Azelma would actually work for the plot much better than helpless Azelma. And I think there's a lot more to Jehan than meets the eye... in the book, it mentions that when the Amis made fun of him for bringing flowers to a meeting he stood up for himself and said some brusque words that proved him to be perfectly capable of being a strong individual. His death scene in the book also showed his bravery when they heard him shout "Vive la République" before his execution. Sorry for the long reply... thanks for the review!

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

"I think Marius is alive," Enjolras announced to his traveling companions of three days now.

"You mean that lovesick son of a bitch?" Grantaire took a swig of wine and grinned sloppily.

"You decide to mention this now?" Éponine snarled, slamming her cup down.

"I wanted to make sure. I saw his grandfather Monsieur Gillenormand yesterday, and he had Fauchelevent in his coach, so I thought it must mean Marius is alive."

"We could have gone to him for help! We wouldn't be halfway across France on a broken knee and sprained ankle!" Éponine said, exasperated.

"If he wasn't alive we'd have been asking for Gillenormand's help while he was in a foul, foul mood- and if you've heard Marius' description of that man you'd know that would not be a smart decision." Grantaire visibly shuddered at the idea.

Éponine sighed heavily and massaged the bridge of her nose. "How is he even alive? I saw him get shot."

"You got shot, too, almost right afterwards." Enjolras frowned at the memory, but continued. "I saw him get carried off by Monsieur Fauchelevent, and last I saw them both, they were headed to the sewers."

Realisation hit Éponine at the last part. "_That's_ why you didn't take us to the sewers."

"I was worried that the guards would still be chasing us when we went in. If they'd still been there not only would we have been caught, they would, too," Enjolras explained, perfectly composed as he sipped at his coffee.

"Ah. Good thinking," Grantaire praised, lifting his cup in Enjolras' direction.

"Alright, fine, I forgive you," Éponine grumbled.

"You couldn't help it. You're obsessed with each other," Grantaire said frankly.

The other two blushed and looked away from each other. "I guess you're right," she said into her wine with a small smile. She saw Enjolras grin to himself out of the corner of her eye and couldn't help but break into a grin of her own.

* * *

"When can we tell them?" He turned to her, brown eyes pleading. "I want to see them."

"Not yet," she replied, slurping her juice. "Trust me, I miss them just as much as you do."

"Why not?" he gesticulated and pointed at the enormous clock tower visible outside the restaurant they were sitting at. "We've been in England for a month! Surely you know if we're safe or not."

"When I said out of the water," she sighed, putting her cup down and looking at him intently, "I meant France would have forgotten you ever existed."

He nearly dropped his fork. "What? I thought you just wanted us to be out of their hunting range!"

"We can't go back now. We're not here for a holiday, 'Han. We'll be here for the rest of our lives."

He heaved a great sigh, a thousand words he'd like to spill balancing on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed them and met her green eyes with a tremulous smile. "Then I'm glad you're here with me."

"Without me you'd be dead in a ditch somewhere."

"That I would," he chuckled. "But without me, you wouldn't have a translator."

"I would have gotten around fine without English," she argued. "I'd have picked it up eventually."

"In several years' time, you mean," he smiled. "Admit it. You need me as much as I need you."

She held his gaze defiantly for a second before dropping her eyes to her lap with a shy smile. "Maybe I do."

* * *

"You knock. You're the one he owes," Grantaire urged, nudging her with his good shoulder.

"I don't know if he'll remember me," Éponine replied doubtfully. "He was old then and even more ancient now."

"He owes you his life. You don't forget that sort of thing," Grantaire pressed.

"Fine." She knocked on the door in three sharp raps.

"There's nobody there," Grantaire said after ten seconds had passed.

"Knock again," Enjolras said.

Éponine reached out to do so when the door swung open, revealing a woman around their age, with light brown tresses. Her dark green eyes were the same colour as the dress she'd given her a week ago, back when the Amis were still alive and well.

"Éponine?" The woman blinked owlishly at the three in disbelief.

"Musichetta?" Éponine asked in the same tone of voice.

"What are you doing here? How do you know where I live? You look awful! You three are wanted across the country, you know, if you're caught it's the _chain gang__-_"

"We know," Enjolras interrupted severely, and Musichetta was silenced immediately. It appeared he still had that effect on people.

"We're actually here for Doctor Mestienne," Éponine said. "Unless this is the wrong address."

"It's the right address. He's my grandfather." Musichetta said, who was still in shock.

"What a coincidence. Well, could we see him? You can probably tell we could really use his medical degree right now." Éponine gestured to their disheveled state of blood and broken bones.

"Yes. Yes, of course- how did you even get this far?" Musichetta ushered them in, closing the door behind her.

"Three and half days and a lot of determination," Grantaire answered, daring to plant a kiss on the young woman's cheek. She slapped him and opened another door for them in an easily practiced motion. Her training at the Musain still hadn't worn off.

"Grandpapa, there's people that want to see you," Musichetta said.

An old man in his mid seventies sat alone in a small dining room, sipping at a cup of tea. He turned slowly and his eyes immediately fell on Enjolras. Éponine instinctively stood in front of him, as if to protect him.

"My name is Éponine Jondrette, and you'll remember the debt you owe me," she said quickly. "If you swear that neither you nor your family will tell a soul about seeing or even knowing us you can consider that debt erased."

The man gazed thoughtfully at Éponine. "Done," he said, turning around completely. "What do you want from me?"

"We've suffered many injuries, sir," Enjolras said respectfully, coming forward. "We're here to ask for you skill in medicine and your aid in healing us."

"I will not give you to the police, but why should I consent to treat criminals?" Mestienne said coldly, and Éponine saw Enjolras swell with righteous anger.

"We are _not_-" he began heatedly, but Musichetta cut in hurriedly.

"Please, Grandpapa, they have gone through so much for the good of France. They've fought for us," the granddaughter pleaded.

"You do not know what is good for France," the old man said. "You are too young, so young that you cannot possibly know."

"We may be young, but we are not blind! It is clear that France is suffering, and it is clear that something must be done about it. If it is martyrdom, so be it," Enjolras said, eyes alight with a fire that Éponine hadn't seen since the barricade had fallen. It lifted her spirits.

"If you think voicing those opinions will heal your wounds, you are sorely mistaken," Mestienne told them, beginning to turn back around.

"Grandpapa!" Musichetta cried at the same time Enjolras took another step forward.

"I have money," he said reaching into his coat with dirt-streaked fingers. He produced a five-hundred-franc banknote. "Perhaps this will persuade you."

Éponine had known he was rich, but her eyes were still glued to the piece of paper. She'd never seen so much money at a time in her life. Judging by the look on Musichetta and Mestienne's faces, neither had they. Grantaire just raised an eyebrow and took a swig from his bottle.

The old man took it slowly- everything he did, he did it slowly. "I am not sure if I can save everything," he said at last. He looked at Grantaire. "That untreated knee, for example, will most likely give you a limp for the rest of your life." The drunk shrugged again, and sat himself down.

Éponine and Enjolras exchanged glances before sitting down as well.

"I will, however, try. You must first wash yourselves; I can't do anything with all that blood and soil. Musichetta, show them the bath."

The bath was a tiny room just down the hall consisting of a bathtub and a large bucket of water. Éponine hadn't seen a bath since the inn. Enjolras and Grantaire weren't nearly as impressed as she was but were obviously grateful to be clean.

Musichetta excused herself, but paused at the door before whirling back around, a grief-stricken expression on her face. "Please, just tell me one thing."

Éponine gave her a curious look. "Of course," said Enjolras.

"Joly and Bossuet?"

The mention of the two students nearly brought tears to Éponine's eyes again. Enjolras and Grantaire both looked to her to deliver the news with sorrowful eyes. She managed to keep her voice steady, shaking her head.

"I'm sorry."

Musichetta wailed in despair and collapsed into the doorframe, sobbing.

* * *

"When are you going to admit that you love me?" He stood with his back to her, facing the window.

"I'm not like your other women," Azelma snapped. "I'm not about to fall into your arms and forget about everything else."

He whipped around to face her, hazel eyes wild. "That's because you're better than every other woman I know! Zelma, I don't know anybody else like you."

"I'm touched," Azelma said sarcastically. "Good try."

"Goddamn it, how many times do I have to say it? _I'm in love with you_."

"I know you are." She inspected her fingernails.

"And I know you're in love with me."

"Then why do you need me to say it?"

"Because you need to know, too."

Azelma lifted her chin with a challenging glint in her eye. "Who says I don't?"

He was shocked still.

"You're right. So why do you need me to say it, when you know it already?"

"Azelma..." He was across the room in a second, his hands gripping her shoulders tightly. "Please."

"Fine. I'm in love with you. Alright? I'm so in love with you I saved your sorry ass and hauled it halfway across Europe with me. Happy?"

"More than you could imagine," said Jehan, and suddenly he was kissing her, and it felt like coming home.

* * *

"I thought you were dead," Marius said, staring at them, slack-jawed.

"Likewise, my friend," Grantaire smirked, and then held out a bottle. "Want some?"

Marius gaped at the three of them, standing at the front of his house.

"Darling? Who is that?" A voice came from further within the building. A blonde woman long, flowing hair and sparkling bright blue eyes came flouncing out of the house in a white and lilac dress.

When she saw them she stopped moving, and her eyes enlarged.

"Meet Cosette, my wife, the Baroness Pontmercy." Marius coughed awkwardly.

There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Grantaire bowed low. "Grantaire, known as R. Infamous drunk, disbeliever, and wanted revolutionary with a permanent limp carrying his dead friend's old cane, at your service." He tapped Joly's cane to his nose in an imitation of the medical student.

Éponine smiled slightly. "Your childhood bully and daughter of the people that abused you, the girl who dressed up as a boy to deliver you letters and then finally to fight in the June Rebellion, Éponine Thenardier."

"Enjolras. Leader of the revolution in which everybody but the people standing before you died."

"... It's nice to see you. Please come in for some tea," said Cosette faintly.

Éponine and Enjolras exchanged a smile.

* * *

"They couldn't find Azelma," Enjolras told them.

Éponine sank into a seat. "I can't believe it. First Gavroche, then..."

Enjolras kissed her gently. "I'm sorry."

"That really dampens the mood,' Grantaire groused. "I was planning on bringing out the good wine tonight."

"Do it anyway, it might make me feel better," Éponine replied, voice muffled by Enjolras' shirt.

"How did she just disappear? You told her to stay at the Musain, right?" Enjolras seemed seriously confused as to how Azelma might have gone missing.

Éponine knew better. "She's a Thenardier, and that mean she doesn't follow instructions. I told you she was better at being stealthy than I was. The Musain would have been easy to escape. I just wish I knew where she went."

"You're sure she would be fine on her own? When we left she wasn't even eighteen."

"Without mother and father breathing down her neck, Zelma's a force to be reckoned with. If she wants to disappear, you won't find her. I can guarantee it."

* * *

She knocked on the door hesitantly, fiddling with the hem of her dress. When it opened, Cosette's face brightened at the sight of her.

"Éponine! I thought you'd be downstairs with the boys." The two of them glanced at the staircase, down which the laughter of Grantaire and Marius and the scolding of Enjolras could be heard.

"I wanted to talk to you," Éponine said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.

Cosette noticed this instantly. "Is everything okay?" she asked, concern on her sweet face as she let Éponine into her room.

"Oh, it's fine. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry." Éponine couldn't meet her eyes. It would remind her too much of the exhausted, sad face of the young Cosette back in Montfermeil.

"For what- oh!" Cosette seemed to finally get what she was talking about, and her eyes softened, taking Éponine by the elbow and leading her onto her bed where they sat. "I never blamed you for that, Éponine. You were just a child, easily influenced by your horrible parents."

"I still did the things I did, and I can't take them back," Éponine replied forcefully, shame lacing the words. "I can't take them back, no matter how much I want to."

"You don't have to," Cosette said simply, lifting her face so that she could see her eyes. "What's past is past. We can't change that. I'd like to make my papa come back alive, and I'd like to make the rebellion successful, but I can't do that. You bullied me in Montfermeil, and I admit I was incredibly jealous of you, but that's all over. Now we're both alive, and well, and we can look past that now. Alright?"

Éponine watched her earnest face and soft blue eyes and let out a bark of laughter. "I didn't know you could be so smart," she said.

Cosette blushed. "Don't be silly," she said. "I was just saying the truth."

Éponine grinned. "Could we try that? Looking past everything?"

"Are you asking me to be your friend?" Cosette asked, amused.

"So what if I am?" Éponine said, defensively.

The blonde let out a trill of laughter and wrapped Éponine in a hug. "I'd love to be your friend."

* * *

**AN: **Friendship!


	16. His Smile

**Chapter Fourteen - His Smile**

**Smiles1998:** Yeah, I guess I did make it kind of obvious :)  
**HermsP:** Thank you, I like the pairing too, hehe  
**FurtherIllumination:** Right? I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP. Thank you for the kind words! 3  
**DramaRose13:** They all have so much depth GAH and yeah, I always wondered how Musichetta would react to their deaths. The answer I consistently came up with was that she'd be completely devastated, since she had not one but two men in her life that both meant just _so_ much to her. To suddenly have neither would be destroying.

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

"Han!" He looked up at his name as she entered the house, face stretching in a brilliant grin. He smiled just to see it.

"You'll never guess what I did."

Jehan's smile widened as he leaned back in his chair, putting down his quill. "What did you do? Don't tell me you've gone and told the shop owner you're pregnant just to get a discount again."

"No, even better!" Azelma was positively bursting. "I sent a letter."

"Alright. So what?"

"To France."

Jehan felt faint. "To France?"

"The one and only Enjolras!" Zelma bounced on the balls of her feet.

"Sweet Jesus." He put his head in his hands.

"Aren't you happy?" demanded Azelma, crossing her eyes as her green eyes flamed dangerously. "You've been asking to tell them since we left Paris!"

He looked back up, eyes shining with tears. "I am. I just can't believe we're going to see them again."

At this, she enveloped him in a giant hug, pulling tight against her. "We'll see them. Enjolras, Éponine, Grantaire... even Marius and Cosette!"

Jehan's head shot up. "Marius is alive, too?"

"Yes! And Cosette's now the Baroness Pontmercy!" Azelma kissed him in her excitement.

He didn't know whether he could take any more good news. "Sweet Jesus," he repeated.

They gazed at each other in contentment before Jehan noticed something peculiar. "Wait a minute. How did you find out Enjolras' address? And why do you know all this information about our friends?"

She suddenly looked sheepish. "I may or may not have been in contact with Cosette for the last three months."

"Sweet Jesus."

* * *

Cosette was still smiling benignly at her and Éponine was still trying to breathe. "_Godmother?_" she asked again.

"Yes, Ép, I've said it twice already!" Cosette giggled at her friend, watching her clutch at her throat.

"But... _why_?"

"Because you're my only female friend," she said, "And because I think you'd be perfect!"

"What about Musichetta? She's our friend."

Cosette pursed her lips. "Fine. You're my _best_ female friend."

"I'm the worst choice you could have picked!" Éponine threw her hands up in exasperation.

"Let's not have an aneurysm here," Grantaire muttered under his breath as he, Enjolras, and Marius watched the two with amused eyes.

"What are you talking about? You'd be a brilliant godmother to Fantine!" Cosette beamed, hand resting on her very pregnant belly.

"Cosette, I bullied you for seven years, was brought up by two very dangerous criminals, and lived most of my life as a thief and gang member, and then as a wanted revolutionary who nearly died four times because of sheer stupidity!"

Éponine gave a start when she felt Enjolras wrap an arm around her waist but relaxed into his body almost immediately. "You're also brave, tenacious, smart, and brought up two younger siblings in the slums of Saint Michel before even turning twenty because you cared about them," he said, his fingers tracing patterns on her hip.

She gritted her teeth and stopped herself from shivering at the sensation. "I hate you," she ground out, and Enjolras just smirked, a habit he'd picked up from being around Éponine for too long. "I'm a horrible influence on you."

"You like it," he whispered in her ear, and this time she couldn't help but shudder, which only made his smirk grow.

"Alright, alright," Éponine said, pushing Enjolras off her. "I'll be the goddamned godmother."

"I love you so much!" Cosette launched herself at the smaller woman, the weight of her swollen belly sending them both to the floor.

"Stop fucking laughing!" Éponine shouted from underneath the mass of blonde hair as Grantaire dissolved into girlish giggles and Marius looked torn between joining him and running to help his wife up.

* * *

"R?" Éponine opened the door to his room a crack and found him in the corner, empty bottles fanning out around him in a semicircle. "Oh, God. What happened?"

Grantaire turned slowly, alcohol leaking from his slightly open mouth like drool. "Hey, Éponine. Heyy. Heeeeyyyy, Poooonnniiineee."

"Jesus, R," Éponine frowned as she nudged him with her toe. "This is a lot, even for you."

"I gotta good reason," he slurred as he tried to sit up and ended back up on the floor.

"Let's hear it, then," Éponine sighed as she began kicking all the bottles away from him into another corner to clear up some space on the floor.

"Well, firs' of all I'm still sad. Like, so _fucking_ sad, righ'? And angry. I'm angry still. It's been so long and these 'motions jus' don' go 'way." He frowned and drank some more, except he miscalculated and ended up pouring the rest of his bottle down his shirt. "Aw, shit."

Éponine gazed down at the man and her lower lip trembled as a pang of guilt went through her system. They hadn't noticed he was still taking this so heavily. "We're all still sad, and angry, R," she said gently, kneeling down beside him. "But this is the wrong way to deal with it."

"_Don't fucking tell me how to deal with it_," Grantaire hissed, sounding so shockingly sober that Éponine had to check to make sure he was still drunk. "I've dealt wi' things like this since I knew 'ow to drink," he said, furrowing his brow as he tried to stack bottles into a pyramid. "I've known 'bout things since I knew 'ow to _see__._ But now they're real, righ'? They're _real_."

"You've always seen things clearer than we have," Éponine admitted, brushing hair out of his face. "We were broken eventually, but we moved on. You can't dwell, R. It destroys you."

"You were the one who yelled at me at the barricade when I said they were justified to 'ave Jehan," Grantaire mumbled. "What 'appened to you?"

"I grew up," Éponine told him. "You have to, too."

"I was grown up when I crawled outta my mother's fucking vagina," Grantaire growled. "I'm older than alla you."

Éponine had to subtly wipe away a tear at the image of the man slumped before her. The best hidden cracks were often the deepest.

* * *

"Apollo!"

Enjolras rolled over on their shared bed, eyes still sticky with sleep. "What?"

Éponine stopped at the doorway to their bedroom, waving a piece of paper in her hand. "There's a letter for us, but it's from London. Do we know anybody from London?"

Enjolras opened one eye. "No."

Éponine scowled at him, hands on her hips. "Why are you still in bed? You're always the one that wakes up six in the morning. It's _eleven_."

"Maybe because you kept me up until at least four."

She smirked and wiggled her eyebrows. "Don't tell me you didn't like it."

Enjolras was fully awake now, opening staring at her with teasing eyes. "Oh, believe me, I did."

Éponine snorted in laughter and sat on the bed beside him. "Well, you don't get any more until tonight, because Grantaire is coming in an hour or so and we have to get dressed."

"And we've got to read that letter," Enjolras said, sitting up and wrapping his arms around her bare arms. She leaned into his touch and broke open the seal.

They froze as the words of a familiar song were revealed. It was an original copy of _their_ song, the one that had been sung at the barricade.

On the back was a messily scrawled sentence:

_Don't freak out too much, but we are alive and well and we want to see you._

It was signed with the initials A.T. and J.P.

"That's Azelma's writing."

"Where did you say this came from?" Enjolras said, very quietly.

"London."

They looked at each other, hope brimming in their eyes.

"Jehan," Enjolras said.

"Azelma," Éponine said at the same time.

* * *

"So what was it like learning English?" Éponine smirked, knowing her sister's horrible language skills.

"Quite easy, actually. For the longest time 'Han did it for me." Azelma returned the smirk perfectly. Enjolras noticed not for the first time how different the two siblings looked, though they often did things the exact same way.

"Jehan's still a pushover, then?" Grantaire snickered, and said pushover cuffed him upside the head.

"He can't help it. He loves her," Éponine said, quoting a conversation from so long ago.

They gave each other the smile used by those in on an inside joke.

"I don't get it," Marius voiced loudly.

"That's nothing new," Enjolras quipped, and everybody laughed at the look on Marius' face.

"He's regretting coming to England," Cosette said in her high, tinkling tones.

"That's not true," Marius said, looking around at them all. "When was the last time we've all been together, at one place?"

"Well, never," Musichetta pointed out. "Cosette's never met the other Amis, and Azelma's never met you. And I've never met Cosette, until now."

"You know what I mean," Marius said, rolling his eyes.

"It was almost four years ago," Enjolras said, a grim darkness in his eyes that only appeared when he was thinking of his rebellion.

Éponine moved her hand so that it covered his. "Apollo," she murmured, and he entwined their fingers, his face relaxing.

"The revolution," Jehan said quietly.

Musichetta had tears in her eyes, thinking of Joly and Bossuet. Her life had never been the same without the two men, and she'd never moved on, vowing to stay true to them forever.

"It was a failure," Grantaire said, always the pessimist.

"Bullshit," Azelma said swiftly. Everybody's eyes shot to hers. "It wasn't a failure, it was fucking brilliant."

Éponine's mouth twitched at her sister's dirty mouth. It seemed old habits really did die hard.

"She's right," Cosette sided with Azelma. To everyone's surprise, they'd become fast friends. "You inspired thousands of people. You fought for France when nobody else were strong enough to. You went through hell and back, but you came out brighter than you were going in."

"Eloquent," Grantaire commented, but he used sarcasm so much it was no longer possible to differentiate when he was being sarcastic.

"Fuck, Cosette, you should be a therapist or something," Éponine said with a grin, thinking of the conversation they'd had when first becoming friends.

"I'm still amazed we're here together," Marius said finally.

"Good thing we got married, then, and invited everybody," Jehan said, holding up he and Azelma's clasped hands and displaying the rings on them. "Well, everybody that wouldn't rat us out to the police."

"I'd never thought I'd get married before my sister," Azelma grinned.

"Which she should," Musichetta said with a pointed glare at Enjolras.

"Marriage," Éponine said, defending him, "is not our thing."

At this, the four men gave each other concerned looks.

"Too bad you think so," Grantaire said casually, ignoring Enjolras' warning glance. "Because he was planning on asking tonight."

"_Grantaire!_"

* * *

Éponine stared at him with round eyes. "Enjolras? Is it true?"

He fidgeted, not looking her in the eye. "A little."

"Well, might as well do it now," Azelma said. "Thanks, R. Now we can all see it."

"My pleasure," returned Grantaire, delightedly watching Enjolras' expression of total panic.

"Come on, Enjolras!" Marius urged, grinning widely.

He shot them all a deadly glower before turning to Éponine. "Alright then." He cleared his throat awkwardly. 'Éponine Thenardier-"

"No, I want it on one knee," Éponine interrupted, grinning devilishly as her friends fell apart in hysterics.

Enjolras gave Éponine an exasperated look, but complied and bent on one knee. He took a deep breath and plowed on. "This is really hard," he said, a half-smile on his face. "I'm not good with words. Not around you."

Éponine beamed at him, feeling love swell in her chest.

"And I wrote a speech - _don't laugh_ - but I've realised that nothing we've done together was scripted or planned, so it's really not fitting at all. I don't know what to say, Ponine, you take my breath away just by being there. But I do know this: I didn't know the meaning of love until I met you. With Marius droning on and on about Cosette - no offense, Cosette - it honestly just put me off on the idea of love. And then you came along, and I realised I'd been wrong about love the entire time. You're almost always right - fine, you're always right - and you were right about love, too. It's not dying for somebody, it's living for somebody. I want to live with you forever, Ponine."

She was now gazing speechlessly down at him, radiating joy and love for the man on his knee for her. _I love you. I love you. I love you._

"This is so good," Jehan whispered to Azelma, practically weeping, and received a "shut _up__!_" and a smack on the back of his head.

Enjolras dug in his pocket, his face the colour of his jacket (he _still_ had it, after all this time), and drew out a small box. "So, Éponine Thenardier, I just gave the most important and utterly embarrassing speech of my life. Still, will you marry me?"

"I lied when I said marriage wasn't our thing," Éponine said with a smile so enormous it threatened to split her face in half. "Because it definitely is now."

Enjolras watched her slide on the ring with hopeful eyes. "Is that a yes?"

"What do you think, you fuckwit? Kiss her already!" Azelma threw a strawberry at Enjolras, who caught it deftly and ate it with a half-smile. _His smile_, Éponine thought, feeling like she was floating.

"Gladly." Enjolras gave the woman before him a smirk that would do even Azelma proud, and put his hand on the back of Éponine's neck, drawing her to him.

"I love you," she breathed, snaking her fingers through his curls.

"I know," he said, and closed the distance between them.

* * *

**AN: **Technically the last chapter, but technically not, because there's an epilogue.

Also, Aaron Tveit or Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown fans, did you catch the reference?


	17. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE**

**KaraTheTexan:** *fistpump* References! I love that shit. And Aaron. So it works out well.  
**a-little-fall-of-pain:** *emits a sound between one that a kettle makes or that a dying cat makes* THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU  
**Smiles1998: **Indeed. Is 'great job' meant to be a question?  
**DramaRose13:** Thank you very much :) I do ship one-sided E/R, but it wasn't really highlighted in the story so it was more "Grantaire really admires Enjolras" and less "Grantaire is hopelessly in love with Enjolras", but you can look at it from either point of view. If you want to see some of that crush going on, if I write another E/É I'd make the E/R more obvious.

**Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.**

* * *

Enjolras didn't think was right that they had a funeral for him. If he had been there, he'd have snorted and said something caustic about funerals being a waste of time and money.

But he wasn't there, and that was the reason they stood around the hole in the ground shoveling dirt onto his body.

He looked drunk even in death.

Éponine was gradually soaking the shoulder of his red jacket (yes, he _still_ had it) so he brought her to him and held her tight because he knew she liked it when her chin is fit into the crook of his neck just right.

Her sister wasn't crying because she was too busy trying to comfort Jehan, who was the one with tears running down his face. Azelma's jaw was taut as she held back her own sorrow to extinguish her husband's.

Musichetta was clutching onto Cosette and they were weeping together. The former had gotten to be friends with the drunk after the barricades, finding refuge in his detached view of the world after the loves of her life had passed away.

Marius was cradling the two-year-old Fantine in his arms. The child was sleeping and blissfully unaware of the grief around her. If he were there he woudl have made some sardonic comment on the rest of humanity being just as ignorant as the toddler.

And Enjolras? He glared at the grave as if it had insulted him. He didn't understand. How could he die, after all this time? How could he _give up__?_ He had been with them all the way through. He had saved his life, for God's sake! They'd been finally recovering from the barricade. Enjolras could talk about it without getting into one of his moods. Éponine could share stories about the trouble Courfeyrac and Gavroche got into. Musichetta could hear Joly or Bossuet's name without flinching.

They'd been _getting better_.

And now it seemed they were back to square one.

* * *

After Marius and Cosette had another daughter (named Gabrielle, for Marius' mother) and Azelma and Jehan, shortly after, had a son (named Gervais, after Courfeyrac), Enjolras kept seeing Éponine giving the infants longing looks.

"Do you... are you interested in having children?" Enjolras asked her tentatively while they were laying in each other's arms, early in the morning.

"Yes," Éponine had whispered in reply. "Yes."

"We can try," Enjolras said, as he kissed her on the forehead.

"No," said Éponine.

"But I thought..."

"I can't raise children."

"Of course you can," Enjolras said, smiling at her. "You were brilliant with Gavroche and Fantine adores you."

"I can't," repeated Éponine, her lower lip trembling.

Enjolras stared at her in confusion for a second before it hit him. She was _scared_. She'd seen exactly what bad parenting looked like, and she was afraid she'd take after the people that had raised her. "Ponine, you're nothing like your parents," he told her firmly.

"I'm more alike them than you think," she replied bitterly. "Apollo, I have no idea how to raise a child properly. I'm bad at taking care of things, including myself. I want to give him a normal life where he can feel safe- how do I do that if I don't even know what that means? Why the _fuck_ would you choose _me_ to raise a kid?"

"Because you can do it," Enjolras said, sitting up and laying his hands on her shoulders, "You have a mother's instinct and you know exactly what can go wrong, meaning you can prevent it before it happens. There's no right way of raising a child, but you have all the right intentions and I know you can carry them out, and that's what counts. And we'd make the most beautiful children, Ponine. Can you imagine? Your eyes and your hair?"

Éponine laughed. "I'd want them to have your eyes."

"Blue eyes are overrated. I like yours better," he said, grinning because he could never resist it when she was smiling, too, and looking so beautiful and _alive_.

* * *

He didn't go to her funeral.

He didn't think he could take the guilt if he did. Because it's _his fault_ she's dead. _He_ had gotten her pregnant, and she hadn't made it through childbirth, taking their son with her. He'd killed her- indirectly, but it was still his fault.

Marius didn't think so, neither did Cosette or Jehan or any of the others but he knew they were just in denial.

He still went home expecting her to bound out of their room and bowl him over in a kiss, bringing them both to the ground.

He still woke up thinking she'll be beside him, grumbling in her sleep about him opening the curtains and letting the sunshine in.

He still walked into the Musain looking for her behind the counter chatting with Musichetta.

He felt her beside him, _all the time_, but when he looked she was never there.

And she won't ever be, not anymore.

* * *

He sees her. He sees all of them. They are smiling at him, and he wants to cry from the joy that wells up in his heart at the happiness in their faces.

He's missed them. He's missed _her_, especially. He hasn't seen her in seven years, and that's already as bad as the fourteen he hasn't seen the rest of them.

He hasn't stopped thinking of them. Not a single one. Not Combeferre, not Courfeyrac, not Bahorel, not Feuilly, not Joly, not Bossuet, not Gavroche, not Grantaire, and certainly not Éponine. It's because he still loves them. He loves all of them, even Grantaire, the idiot that didn't die on the barricade but by drinking himself to death five years after. It's the reason he doesn't mind when the bullet enters his body the second he steps out the door. In fact, he welcomes it. He's a little guilty about leaving the others behind, but he knows they'll understand.

The last thing his killer saw was his peaceful smile and his arms outstretched, as if embracing another.

"Nice of you to join the party," Bahorel says sarcastically.

"Took you long enough," Grantaire jokes.

"Can you believe we don't get sick anymore?" Joly is grinning wildly.

"Bossuet's luck is still the same, though," Feuilly says, patting the bald man on the shoulder.

"Ferre's been winning way too many chess matches without you here," Courfeyrac complains.

He feels warmth flood his body and he finally smiles, _for real_, for the first time in seven years.

Suddenly she is there, touching his hand with her own. She is exactly as he remembers, with the flowing dark hair, warm golden brown eyes, and soft, soft skin.

"Enjolras," she whispers, but it's clear as day and the husky timbre of her voice is so achingly familiar he shivers.

"Éponine," he breathes in reply, grabbing her hand tight, entwining her fingers.

"Welcome to the tomorrow that never came," she says with the grin on her face he's missed ever since she'd left them. "Here we live again."

And then he kisses her and touches the curve of her jaw and the satin of her hair and the silk of her lip. It's been _so long__, _but now they have longer.

"We'll live forever."

* * *

**AN: Aaaand that's a wrap! **

**Thank you all so much for reading my little story! Thanks especially to all of you that followed, favourited, and reviewed, _truly_, from the bottom of my heart because I could not have finished it without the support of you guys. **

**I'm writing a modern AU of E/É with one-sided E/R, but that won't be up for a while and I don't even know if I _will_ put it up. I'll see how good or bad it is. Either way, I hope to be writing more in the future, whether it's oneshots or chapter fics! **

**Any reviews that are put in from this point will be responded to via PM, so don't worry, I'll still reply to you! **

**Thank you again for reading. I didn't anticipate this many people to like it, so thanks for telling me because otherwise I would have perpetually been like "omfg I have failed them all" and would probably have not continued it. **

**I love you all.**


	18. Companion Piece!

Hey, y'all! This is Stormy (or as some of you know me on tumblr, theatreturtles). I just wanted to get the word out that I've written a companion piece to _To Live_ - it's a very short oneshot, written in the period before Enjolras, Éponine, and Grantaire showed up on Marius' front door and when Marius was still heavily depressed by his friends' deaths. It was inspired by the song from the musical, "Empty Chairs on Empty Tables", so you can imagine the vein it runs in.

Anyway, though it doesn't have much to do with Enjonine or Jehelma, it does have to do with our beloved Les Amis and their resident lovesick puppy Pontmercy and how he remembers his friends.

It's named _Extinguished_ - find it on my profile, or follow the link [fanfiction . net]/s/9701976/1/Extinguished.

I love you all, and thanks again for reading _To Live_!

Love,  
Stormy


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